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Description: SIGNED AND DATED (MAKER'S MARKS)
signed and dated 1866

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Medium: oil on canvas

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Dimensions: 120 by 167cm., 47 1/4 by 65 3/4 in.

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Provenance: The Turkish Sale, Sotheby's London, 17th October 1997, lot 314

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Published: Gianni Caffiero and Ivan Samarine, Seas, Cities and Dreams: The Paintings of Ivan Aivasovsky, London, 2000, plate 18, p.42

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Notes: Aivasovsky first visited Constantinople in 1845, and from then, until his death in 1900, it was to be a great inspiration to him and, and he was to paint it nearly every year from then until 1899. He became so familiar with the city that he was able to paint it from memory, and years after this first encounter with Constantinople, he met an old acquaintance when staying in an hotel in Vienna, who had recently been appointed to the Ottoman embassy having previously been Chamberlain to Sultan Abdülhamit and taken care of the artist on one of his trips to Constantinople as a guest of the Sultan. They talked of Constantinople, and Aivasovsky, sensing the diplomats homesickness, kept him occupied with some magazines, whilst he disappeared into an adjacent room to return a short while later to hand him a small painting that was still wet, depicting the Golden Horn by moonlight, saying I just painted it for you so that you would look at it and not miss your beautiful Constantinople.

Aivasovsky became official painter to the Russian Admiralty, having been enrolled in 1837, at the age of twenty, in the battle-painting classes of Alexander Sauerweid at the Imperial Academy of Arts, at the specific request of Emperor Nicholas I. It was in this capacity that that he was later to accompany the navy on several operations and expeditions, and in the summer of 1845, at the behest of Lord High Admiral Grand Duke Constantine Nicholaevich, he joined the geographer Admiral Feodor Litke's naval expedition to Constantinople and the Levant, where he made a large number of pencil sketches and began a number of paintings, before returning to Theodosia to complete them. An indication of how smitten the artist was by the city and the enormous impression that it had made upon him is given in a letter he wrote on the 16th March 1845, in which he said: There is nothing more majestic than this city; here one forgets both Naples and Venice.

The artist painted many panoramic views of Constantinople depicting the city in various lights, in sunrise, sunset, or by moonlight, primarily from two viewpoints, the Golden Horn and Galata, views which Alexander Serov (1820-1871), the father of the artist Valentin Serov, felt warranted the highest praise. On June 5th 1846, after visiting an exhibition of Aivasovsky's work in Theodosia, which included views of Constantinople, he wrote in a letter to the art critic Vladimir Stasov: I do not think there is an artist in Europe who can surpass Aivasovsky at this type of painting.......He painted five enormous landscapes between 15th January and 19th May, spending only twenty-one days on Constantinople. Aivasovsky's first recorded oil paintings of Constantinople, both dated 1846, are in the Russian Museum, St. Petersburg, and in the Peterhof Palace, the latter having been acquired by Emperor Nicholas I.

A consideration of Aivasovsky's cultural background goes some way in explaining why Constantinople came to have such a profound effect upon him. Of Armenian parentage, having been brought up in the busy Black Sea port of Theodosia, the cultural links between his hometown and Constantinople would have been far greater than those with St. Petersburg in the distant north. Constantinople, only two hundred miles across the Black Sea from Theodosia, with it's large Armenian population familiar cuisine, smells and sounds, would have been immediately familiar to the artist. There were even similarities between the two cities, and at one time, Theodosia had been nicknamed Küçük Stambul (Little Istanbul) by the Ottomans.

As well as having enjoyed the patronage four Russian Emperors who all decorated their palaces with his seascapes, he also enjoyed the patronage of a succession of Sultans: Abdülaziz, Murad V and Abdülhamit II, who lavished gifts and honours on him.

In May 1857 he travelled to Constantinople with his older brother Gabriel (1812-1880) who ten years later would be ordained Bishop of Echiadzin. The Palace of Dolmabahçe had just been built on the Bosphorous as the new residence of Abdülmecit, and the artist rather astutely gave some of his paintings as gifts to the Sultan's Courtiers, which were later to find their way onto the walls of the palace. The following year Aivasovsky was awarded the Order of Mejidiye by the Sultan

Aivasovsky did not return to Constantinople for seventeen years, when in October 1874, after a trip to Italy, he was invited to the city by of the Sultan, and stopped there on his way back to Theodosia. The Sultan commissioned him to paint five pictures, which he completed in three weeks. The following month he was awarded the Order of Osmaniye (second-class) by the Sultan, and during the following year painted more than twenty-five pictures for him. Sultan Abdülaziz, rather western in his outlook, and himself and accomplished draughtsman, created preparatory sketches for several of these works himself.

In the autumn of 1888 there was an exhibition of his works in Constantinople. His last visit to the city was in the company of his second wife, in 1890, and his final picture of Constantinople was painted in 1899, a year before he died.

The view appears to be from the hill in Beyoglu, with the Nüsretiye Mosque, (built by the Armenian architect Viktor Bahyan in 1826), the Tophane (Gun Foundry), the Kiliç Ali Pasha Mosque, built in 1580, and in the distance on the other side of the Golden Horn, Aghia Eirene, the Sultan Ahmed (Blue) Mosque, and Aghia Sophia.