The Wave

Aivazovsky was 72 when he painted this in 1889, near the end of a long career built almost entirely on the sea. He knew its danger firsthand: on one voyage his ship met such a storm in the Bay of Biscay that Paris newspapers reported him drowned. Now in the Russian Museum, the canvas is enormous, roughly three metres by five, and among his bleakest. A ship has already broken apart, and men cling to a fallen mast as a wall of water climbs over them. In many of his earlier shipwrecks a shaft of light breaks through to promise rescue; in this one the only light catches the foam on the crests.