Ivan Aivazovsky

Ivan Aivazovsky was born to an Armenian family in the Crimean port of Feodosia and trained at the Imperial Academy of Arts in Saint Petersburg. Appointed painter to the Russian Navy, he spent almost sixty years painting the sea, mostly in the studio and from memory, and produced about 6,000 works. His storms, shipwrecks and moonlit bays, with their glowing, translucent light, made him famous across Europe. Chekhov helped make "worthy of Aivazovsky's brush" a Russian byword for beauty.