Pescatori sulla riva

Ivan Aivazovsky spent his life painting the sea, and he painted it from memory. Rather than sit on the shore with an easel, he watched the water for years around his home town of Feodosia, a port on the Black Sea in Crimea, then worked in the studio at great speed, often finishing a canvas in a single day. Most of what people know him for is drama, moonlight on a swell, ships breaking apart in a storm. This is the quieter side of him. No wreck and no gale, only fishermen and their boats on a shore with the sea opening out beyond. He made thousands of pictures across his long life, and scenes like this, plain coastal work at the water's edge, ran through all of them alongside the famous storms.