The Ninth Wave
Ivan Aivazovsky (1817 to 1900) · 1850
Dawn breaks after a night of storm. A handful of sailors cling to the broken mast of their ship while a monstrous wave rears up on the left, its crest lit from within by the rising sun. The sea is the whole subject: green, violet and gold, translucent as glass where the light passes through it and dark as iron in the troughs. The title refers to an old sailors' belief that waves come in cycles and that the ninth is the largest and most dangerous of all.
Aivazovsky painted almost entirely from memory, and he was famous for the speed and confidence of his brush. Stand close and you will see that the foam is a few flicks of thick white paint, while the water beneath it is built from thin transparent glazes that let the underlayers glow. The sun is placed low and slightly off centre so that its light rakes across the wave and turns the spray into a warm halo. The tiny figures are deliberately small; the drama is the sea, and their survival is suggested by the light, not by any rescue in sight.
The picture was painted in eighteen fifty, when Aivazovsky was already the most successful marine painter in Europe, with honours from Russia, France and the Ottoman court. It was bought by Tsar Nicholas the First for the Hermitage and transferred to the Russian Museum when it opened. Aivazovsky produced about six thousand paintings in his life, yet this one remains the image most Russians associate with his name. A small detail to look for: the piece of wreckage the sailors hold is shaped like a cross, a quiet sign of hope in a picture that could otherwise read as pure catastrophe.
Did You Know? Aivazovsky was born Hovhannes Aivazian in Crimea and was so admired in the Ottoman Empire that the sultan commissioned dozens of works from him.
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