Hovhannes Aivazovsky, came into being in a period when romanticism was in a violent struggle against academism.
Romantic at heart, as he was, Aivazovsky did not extricate himself from a number of doctrines of his academic schooling, though in the early period of his career he attained a wonderfully vivid and emotional understanding of the reality. He created an original method of colour -linear composition without contradicting to the theme that he chose. Gradually this idiom or expression underwent changes, the artist's palette grew brighter and came right up to plein-air painting.
Thus, Aivazovsky made his way to the contemporary art guided by his own rules, and his own sprit of world view.
The concept of nature's infinity, its creative, mighty force is just the basis of Aivazovsky's art. Aivazovsky, as a rule, represents the terrible storms against the background of men helping one another in the struggle against the formidable elements of nature. The man will not give in, man will win - this vivid motto of the artist mirrors the profound optimism and tenacity of life, so characteristic of his own people.
The light as a notion plays a considerable role in Aivazovsky's art. The perceptive observer will feel that representing waves, clouds and air perspectives Aivazovsky in fact paints or rather emphasizes the light itself. Light in his art is the symbol of life, hope and faith, the token of eternity.
Aivazovsky inherited those traditions from the sunny songs of the mediaeval poets which he heard in the armenian churches. This is what he wrote about his paintings: "Among my works I would isolate as the best ones those which emphasize the light of the Sun with particular strength". In his last canvases the light falls on the nature from an invisible source as a powerful ray furrowing through the dark ("The Ship Maria", "Amidst the Waves"). Aivazovsky possessed an original system of artistic thinking due to which his art overstepped the accepted cannons of the painting of his time. Those peculiarities should be seen in the solutions, that sometimes reach colour abstraction in his canvases.
Aivazovsky's free-hand drawing disregards any role conforming only to the artist's will that affirms his originality. At the same time, in the same picture he creates a wonderful, transparent decorative tonality where the red, the blue, the green, the yellow and the pink from a wonderful harmony. Observing for example "The Tenth Wave", "Shipwreck off Mount Athos", "The Battle of Sinop", "Fishermen on the Shore", "The Sea" etc. for an instance one forgets theme of the painting itself, and takes it as a song of colours, as an ode to beauty.
With the emotional appeal, passion and poetic spirit of his paintings, responding to the needs of the time, and with his superb accomplishment, Aivazovsky scaled at once the heights of European art. With the same merits to his credit, he imparted a fresh breath to russian painting, becoming one of its best-known figures throughout the world. But Aivazovsky was also closely connected with the armenian culture still in his lifetime with his creative character and the national roots of his view of the world.
It should be mentioned, however, that the pure national in art finds its expression in the idiom of style and shape as well.
Receiving professional education at European and russian academies, the armenian painters brought new methods of representation to the national art which adapted a new shape being mixed with their temperament. This natural process of interplay is the basis of the development of human culture, a process which gradually leads to the crystallization of the national features of art.
Aivazovsky has a great contribution in that process. A painter whose name is inseparable from the new period of the development of armenian art.
Aivazovsky's house was sort of a pilgrimage where armenian writers and poets used to gather. Many actors and musicians displayed their skill on the exhibition hall.
When travelling in Transcaucasia in 1868, Aivazovsky depicted the mountain scenary, "The life of Tiflis", "The Lake Sevan", "Mount Ararat", and its valley scape, thus marking the beginning of the landcsape painting in the armenian Fine Arts. To this series belong his canvas "Noah Descending Ararat" in which, with delicate harmony of light tints, he emphasized the freshness of the air overflown with dawn, the biblical eminence of the scene.
Prominent for their execution and psychological features among scores of his canvases of armenian themes are distinguished the portraits of his grandmother, his brother Gabriel Aivazian, catholicos Khrimian Hayrik, and the mayor of New Nakhijevan A. Khalibian. The artist portrayed his wife Anna Bournazian- Aivazovskaya with light strokes peculiar to his marines. Belonging to the armenian opostolic (Gregorian) church,
Aivazovsky created a series of paintings based on biblical and hitorical themes. Some of his last canvases like "The Baptism of the armenian People", "Oath. Vartan Mamikonian" decorated one of the armenian churches in Feodosia for a long time. A number of paintings devoted to the everyday life of the armenian shepherds and the canvas "A Scene of Tiflis" are of great interest.
Surveying Aivazovsky's art in the whole it should be mentioned, however, that one cannot imagine the historical development of the armenian art ignoring his great contribution to it. While accepting him as a russian painter it is not possible to characterize his works without taking into consideration the armenian roots in his art. That is why belonging to the russian culture Aivazovsky equally belongs to armenian culture as well.