The Ninth Wave #10
by Eric Glaser
Title
The Ninth Wave #10
Artist
Eric Glaser
Medium
Painting - Oil On Canvas
Description
"The Ninth Wave"
Artist: Ivan Aivazovsky (Russian-Armenian, 1817 - 1900)
Title: The Ninth Wave
Object Type: Painting
Genre: Marine Art
Date: 1850
Medium: Oil on Canvas
Collection: State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia
From Wikipedia:
The Ninth Wave (Russian: Девятый вал, Dyevyatiy val) is an 1850 painting by the Russian Armenian marine painter Ivan Aivazovsky. It is his best-known work.
The title refers to an old sailing expression referring to a wave of incredible size that comes after a succession of incrementally larger waves.
It depicts a sea after a night storm and people facing death attempting to save themselves by clinging to debris from a wrecked ship. The debris, in the shape of the cross, appears to be a Christian metaphor for salvation from the earthly sin. The painting has warm tones, which reduce the sea's apparent menacing overtones and a chance for the people to survive seems plausible. This painting shows both the destructiveness and beauty of nature.
From Google Arts and Culture:
The Ninth Wave is probably Aivazovsky’s most famous and popular work. Originally acquired for the Imperial Hermitage, it was one of the first paintings in the collection of the Emperor Alexander III Russian Museum in 1897. The ninth wave — in popular legend, the most terrible, powerful and destructive wave — is fast approaching. Yet the darkness of the night is broken by the light of hope. A small group of people cling to the wreckage of the ship’s mast, which seems a more reliable refuge at dawn than it did in the darkness of the night. The desperate attempts to survive will conquer the stormy sea. The Ninth Wave was, of course, also interpreted allegorically. The painting acquired symbolic meaning for many generations, instilling faith in the victory of man, humanity and life.
From TheArtStory:
The Ninth Wave, usually cited as Aivazovsky's most famous work, is a huge painting of nearly 11 feet (3.3 meters) by 7 feet (2.2 meters), which portrays a group of people clinging to flotsam from a wrecked ship, in the midst of a tempestuous sea surrounded by the brilliant gold tones of the sunrise. The title refers to a traditional nautical belief that the ninth wave is the last, largest and most deadly wave in a series, at which point the cycle begins again. Painted when Aivazovsky was 33 years old, it is characteristic of his mature Romanticism in technique, theme and populist appeal.
The Christian message is less explicit, being confined to the cross-like form of the mast and the pleading attitude of the unfortunates clinging to it, as they look to the rising sun just before the big wave strikes. Displaying the classical academic discipline of composition and palette that Aivazovsky had been taught and then observed in the galleries and salons of the European capitals, The Ninth Wave has all the melodrama of Aivazovsky at his most febrile and all the grandeur of his most strident efforts to impress. The epic quality, which according to Russophile writer and poet Rosa Newmarch, in her perceptive early comments about his work, had become "increasingly pronounced" by this point, did not yet consistently offer the more "truthful vision" of which she found Aivazovsky to be capable.
Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons
Additional image editing by Eric Glaser
Uploaded
March 23rd, 2020
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