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Aivazovsky's Icebergs: an Antarctic mystery

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 February 2014

Rip Bulkeley
Rip Bulkeley*
Affiliation:
38 Lonsdale Road, Oxford, OX2 7EW (rip@igy50.net)
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Abstract

The Armenian-Russian artist Ivan Aivazovsky completed a painting of a polar seascape entitled Ledyanyye gory [Ice mountains] in 1870. The picture has usually been taken for an Antarctic scene depicting HIMS Mirnyi, one of the two ships of the Russian Antarctic Expedition of 1819–1821, in the presence of icebergs, ice cliffs and floes. The author contends, first, that this identification is open to considerable doubt, and second, that other aspects of the painting are also problematic. The painting is in the Aivazovsky Museum in Ukraine. The Museum kindly supplied him with high resolution photographs of the painting but personal scrutiny has proved impossible hitherto. Further research, especially into Aivazovsky's papers, might resolve some of the questions which it raises.

Type
Notes
Information
Polar Record , Volume 51 , Issue 2 , March 2015 , pp. 212 - 215
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014 

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