English: Ships in full sail on a misty morning is a reoccurring motif in Aivazovsky’s œuvre, variations of which he painted throughout his career. In these works, the artist was able to demonstrate his skill for painting diffusing sunlight, shining through the mist and sails, reflecting off the water.

Painting from memory with the aid of simple sketches, and drawing on his vivid imagination, Aivazovsky was less interested in topographical accuracy than the overall mood, atmosphere, and dramatic effect. In 1861, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, comparing Aivazovsky to Alexandre Dumas, wrote: ‘The books of Dumas were devoured with impatience; the paintings of Aivazovsky have been selling like hot cakes. Both produce works that are not dissimilar to fairy tales: fireworks, clatter, screams, howling winds, lightning. Both use everyday hues, yet add to them certain special effects that are likewise natural in origin, but exaggerated to the highest degree, almost to the point of caricature. There is nothing offensive to Aivazovsky in this comparison, I hasten to add: all art implies a measure of exaggeration, as long as it is within certain bounds.’1

Aivazovsky would use the weather and particular light he observed in one place in paintings showing an altogether different location. Despite these liberties, many of the variations on the present theme show places which are clearly identifiable, and include views of the Crimean coast, the Bay of Naples as well as the Bosporus and Constantinople. Painted in 1888, the present work, with its pink and orange palette, is a particularly striking example, and while here the background is reduced to outlines, the busy waterway, surrounded by hills and flanked by buildings, including mosques and minarets, suggest a view of the Bosporus.

Alongside his native Crimea as well as Italy, Constantinople occupies an important place in Aivazovsky’s life and work. He first visited the city as part of a naval expedition in June 1845, and would return on several occasions. Particularly significant for his career was a stay in 1874 on the invitation of Sultan Abdul Aziz, who commissioned him to paint thirty works to be hung in the Dolmabahçe Palace. Later, in 1888, the year the present work was painted, Aivazovsky organized an exhibition at the Russian Embassy in Constantinople, with the aim of raising funds for the Armenian population of the city, and was awarded the Ottoman Order of the Medjidie by Sultan Abdul Hamid II.

Never before offered at auction, Ships on a misty morning has been kept in the same family for a century. It was acquired by the great-uncle of the present owner, who was an antiques dealer in Berlin and Paris. In the early 1940s, he escaped to Nice, dispatching his stock to friends for safe-keeping. He was later deported to and killed in Auschwitz; his family was able to retrieve his possessions, including the present work, in 1945.