Ivan Aivazovsky’s Miniature Seascapes (ca. 1887) – The Public Domain Review

For Ivan Aivazovsky (1817–1900), born in Feodosia, Crimea, to Armenian parents and often remembered as one of the great marine painters of the Russian Empire, capturing the sea usually required large canvases. His turbulent, light-drenched seascapes could be panoramic, stretching more than 200 centimeters across. His masterpiece from 1850 The ninth wavean oil-painted maelstrom of dark waves against a bright orange sunset, measures 332 centimeters (almost 11 feet) in diameter. But in 1887 Aivozovsky proved that he could work just as easily on a much smaller scale. On the occasion of his seventieth birthday, the artist presented each of his 150 dinner guests with a unique miniature painting: small vistas embedded in a studio photo of himself, finished with a brush in hand. At just 10.6 by 7.3 centimeters (about 4 by 3 inches), the paintings are each almost one-thousandth the size of The ninth wave. There are two variations of the underlying photo – in some he is looking at the canvas, in others at the audience – and a few are dated later than 1887, perhaps implying that Aivazovsky continued the practice of gifting for years after the dinner.