L’Arc-en-ciel

By 1873 Aivazovsky had been painting storms for more than thirty years, and everyone knew what to expect from him, crashing waves, doomed ships, high drama. Here he turned the volume down. Sailors cling to a small boat as their vessel breaks apart, but the palette softens to grey, white and pale haze, and through the spray a faint rainbow lifts. Pavel Tretyakov, the Moscow collector whose pictures became the gallery that bears his name, bought it almost as soon as it appeared at the Academy exhibition. Aivazovsky asked for a black frame, so that out of the darkness and the storm the thin band of colour seems to catch fire.