The collection of the Sevastopol Art Museum named after Mikhail Pavlovich Kroshitsky houses a painting named “View of the Bosphorus” by the outstanding marine artist Ivan Konstantinovich Aivazovsky.

The painting depicts a panoramic view of Constantinople from the Bosphorus at sunset. The artist masterfully showed elegant silhouettes of minarets and palaces, standing out against the golden sky, the majestic Oriental city. The style is affected by realistic tendencies, characteristic of the artist’s work of the time: there are no “strong passions”, storms, scenes of shipwrecks, or even “moonglade” on the water surface. What is shown here is a quiet evening, everyday life on the shore of the strait. However, the elaborate composition and the artistic brush with a rather subtle coloristic manner are still in line with the traditions of academism. Ivan Aivazovsky could not completely abandon the spectacular “sunset” illumination.

The outstanding artist Ivan Aivazovsky enjoyed great fame not only in Russia but also in Turkey. He traveled on numerous occasions to the country, which peculiarly combines features of both Eastern and Western cultures. Aivazovsky visited Turkey for the first time in 1845. The artist was a member of the Mediterranean geographical expedition to the shores of Turkey and Asia Minor under the leadership of the famous Russian geographer and navigator Fyodor Litke. He drew a lot and “tenaciously” from life, and after the expedition, he painted a large number of works, including views of the capital. Impressions from the trip were extremely vivid. Aivazovsky considered Constantinople the most beautiful city in the world and repeatedly returned to depicting its views.

The painting “View of the Bosphorus” was made in 1864, a few years after the artist’s second trip to Constantinople. In 1856, at the end of the Crimean (Eastern) War, on his way from France, he visited “this fabulous city”, where he was very warmly welcomed by the local Armenian diaspora. Subsequently, he often exhibited his paintings there, and Sultan Abdulmejid I, as a token of adoration for the painter’s work, even awarded Ivan Aivazovsky with the Order of Nishan Ali, 4th degree, and commissioned him to paint a series of views of the Bosphorus.