Ivan AIVAZOVSKY (1817 - 1900)
Street in Bakhchisarai
Signed and dated "1892" (lower right)
oil on canvas
18 1/2 x 24 1/1 inches, inc. frame
Price: Price on Application
In 1892, Aivazovsky undertook his last great journey; a voyage by sea to America. His intention was to visit the World's Fair in Chicago, where he himself was exhibiting twenty pictures. As it turned out, he traveled to New York, Washington and the Niagara Falls but after two months cut short his visit and returned to Russia. The twenty pictures he sent to Chicago were listed in a letter to Count Ivan Ivanovich Tolstoy; the first five of these were part of his Christopher Columbus cycle, the other 15 were a cross-section of his usual subjects and included views of Naples, Venice, Athens and Constantinople. Number 12 is this painting, Street in Bakhchisarai.
Bakhchisarai was the capital of the Crimean Khanate and the center of the political and cultural life of the Crimean Tartars. Like all Crimean towns, the population of Bakhchisarai in the 19th century was ethnically very diverse and would have included communities of Armenians, Russians and Greeks as well as Tartars.
Aivazovsky depicts three Armenian girls in resplendent national costume emerging from a sunlit garden. One of them gives charity to a blind beggar in a white turban who is being looked after by a small child. Tartar dignitaries look on from the wooden balconies of the palace, and against the background of the rocky cliffs that surround the town is depicted a white minaret