“EXPLOSION OF THE TURKISH SHIP”

THE LAST AND UNFINISHED PAINTING OF HOVHANNES AIVAZOVSKY

Although the massacres of Armenians in Turkey stopped, but they continued to have their tragic consequences also in the 1900’s, and migration of Armenians continued to the Crimea.

It all deeply affected the already aging artist. And he, on the 19th of April (according to the new calendar, on May 2) in the morning took the brush, approached the easel and began to draw a new plot, a sketch of which he had already sketched out the night before, on a piece of paper in the dining room. The artist worked intensely excited and indignant. He wanted to complete the picture on the same day, and called it the “Explosion of the Turkish ship”.

The old artist worked for two hours without a break, he had already sketched the peaceful surface of the sea, the fiery flame exploded warship in the center of the composition. Barely visible on the ship figures of people – Turkish soldiers were in turmoil. But for them there is no salvation. The fire on the ship after the explosion engulfed all. All this is doomed to destruction.

This is the ideological significance of the painting “Explosion of the Turkish ship”. Aivazovsky painted explosion of the Turkish warship on the background of the mountain nature of Turkey, in the port city, linking the explosion of the ship with this country.

Hovhannes-Ivan Aivazovsky died on April 19, 1900 in Theodosia, at his home. And his latest work – “Explosion of the Turkish ship” – was left unfinished.