From I. Aivazovsky's will

The Feodosia Picture Gallery is one of the oldest art museums in Crimea.

It is located in the house in which the outstanding painter of seascapes Ivan Aivazovsky lived and worked. The house was designed by the painter himself and built in 1845. Thirty - five years later, Aivazovsky ordered a large hall built to adjoin the house. This hall was intended to display his paintings before they were sent to exhibitions in other cities of russia and abroad.

In Aivazovsky's times, the gallery was known far beyond the Crimea. After the artist's death, the gallery continued to exist but local authorities cared little about it.

The core of Feodosia's Picture Gallery are the 49 paintings. In the two post - revolutionary decades, the Feodosia picture gallery's collection of Aivazovsky's paintings and drawings reached 150 works. Compared with 1923, the number of visitors increased 15 times.

In the postwar years, Aivazovsky's paintings were displayed in eight halls. The other four exhibited works by the artist's pupils, contemporaries and grandsons.

The pictures displayed in the second, Big Hall, are truly considered to be the pearls of the galler's collection. Its canvases describe the main stages of Aivazovsky's creative activity including his studies at the St. Petersburg Academy of Fine Arts up till the last years of his life.

Gulumian Armine