Navire dans la tempête

Ivan Aivazovsky painted the sea more than almost anyone, thousands of canvases across a long career spent mostly on the Black Sea coast at Feodosia, where he grew up. He rarely worked from the water itself. He watched storms, memorised how the light broke through a wave, and then painted them from memory in his studio, which is how a scene like this ship pitching in heavy weather came together. He made this one in 1899, in his early eighties and near the end of his life. He died the following year, reportedly with an unfinished seascape still on the easel.