Carovana invernale sulla strada

Aivazovsky made his name on water, on storms and moonlit bays and the fleets of the Black Sea. In 1857 he was the toast of Paris, the first Russian painter given a show at the Louvre and awarded the French Legion of Honour that same year. This snowbound scene comes from the same moment and shows the other side of his range. Horses haul loaded sleds along a road that fades into a cold grey haze, the whites and blues he usually kept for sea spray turned here to packed snow. The road runs off the edge of the canvas with no end in sight, the way a real winter haul across Russia would have felt.