Аннотация: Aivazovsky and Poland: a biographical detail. A culturological note.
Aivazovsky and Poland: a biographical detail. A culturological note.
While reading the biographies of Kazimir Malevich, Ilya Repin, Nicholas Roerich and other books, I could not help but notice the mentions about Aivazovsky.
However, when I met in one of the Internet materials the words that Aivazovsky's paintings are periodically hanging in the premises of the President of Turkey, I was slightly surprised.
And was a day, when I moved on to reading the biographies of Aivazovsky.
There are relatively many biographies of Aivazovsky, and they are different in volume.
There are extremely short biographies. Of these, the reader acquires a minimum of information. Educated people know that Aivazovsky is from Feodosia, that he is one of the great residents of Feodosia, that his childhood, partly, was spent at the bazaar in Feodosia ...
There are medium-sized biographies, moderately detailed. Some readers of these biographies can get a certain explanation, why paintings by Aivazovsky are periodically placed in the premises of the President of Turkey. Biographers, for example, talk about the Turkish line in Aivazovsky's pedigree.
Finally, there are biographies, relatively detailed, from which a reader can learn that the surname Aivazovsky is not entirely an accident, that Aivazovsky's ancestors lived in Poland.
How did they get there? How long did they live in Poland? Where did they live? Alas, I could not get an answer to all these questions after reading the biographies of Aivazovsky available to me. Some words in the books can be taken as a hint that the Aivazovskys lived in the Commonwealth, in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania.
Several brothers were born in one of the generations of the Aivazovsky family. After the death of their father, the older brother inherited real estate and a trading business. More younger brother became a kind of "free merchant". Fate and circumstances brought him to the Crimea, to Feodosia, where he got married. One of the sons of the new citizen of Feodosia was the future world famous marine painter.
While reading a detailed biographies, the reader may be surprised: the biographer is amazed that in a number of high-ranking families of the Russian Empire, in the upper layer of the administrative and cultural bureaucracy - in Feodosia, and in Simferopol, and in St. Petersburg ... - young Aivazovsky was recognized with unexpected ease as a person of their own circle ... This it's partly perceived by the biographer as (simply) an amazing phenomenon, and partly is conducted by the biographer towards the ability of young Aivazovsky to play the violin and to draw well...
So, the surname Aivazovsky is not an accident. Its origin is connected with the residence of the artist's ancestors in Poland, in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.
Some of the readers of Aivazovsky's biographies may assume that the house of the Aivazovsky family has survived on the territory of the former Rzeczpospolita (Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth), that the descendants of the Aivazovsky live in Poland, or Belarus, or Lithuania, or another state located within the borders of the former Rzeczpospolita (Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth).
Accordingly, the reader can continue the thought and to assume that the famous artist, traveling around the world and Europe, visited his relatives who remained to live in the territory of the former Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, and presented them with some of his works. And somewhere, in a dark hallway of a little-known old house, exist a some drawings or paintings, slightly covered with dust, and arousing insignificant interest from the owners, who do not know about the details of arrival these works ...
In general, if Kazimir Malevich's connection with Poland is obvious, if in almost any biography of Mikhail Vrubel, albeit not in the first phrases, there is a mention of his Polish origin, then only very detailed biographies of Aivazovsky contain extremely laconic mentions of his connections with Poland. The roots of Ilya Repin's father and mother, who lived in Chuguev (a city in the modern Ukraine), are almost a complete mystery, disappearing almost in whole into the mentions about a military settlements ...
December 10, 2021 13:50
Translation from Russian into English: December 10, 2021 18:34
Владимир Владимирович Залесский "Айвазовский и Польша: биографическая деталь. Культурологическая заметка".
{ 2603. Айвазовский и Польша: биографическая деталь. Культурологическая заметка.
MMDLXXIII. Aivazovsky and Poland: a biographical detail. A culturological note. (English). }