Ivan Aivazovsky

Ivan Aivazovsky was born to an Armenian family in the Crimean port of Feodosia and studied at the Imperial Academy of Arts in Saint Petersburg. He became one of the greatest painters of the sea, producing some six thousand works, often painted from memory, of storms, shipwrecks, moonlit bays and naval battles. The Ninth Wave, in the State Russian Museum, is his most famous painting. He was official painter to the Russian Navy, travelled widely, and founded an art school and gallery in Feodosia, where he lived most of his life.