The Ninth Wave by Ivan Aivazovsky

The Ninth Wave by Ivan Aivazovsky

Survivors at sunrise

A storm has wrecked a ship in the night, and at dawn a few survivors cling to a floating piece of mast, still trailing its ropes. One of them waves a red cloth. Just beyond them a huge wave rears up, glassy green where the light comes through it and breaking white at the crest. The sun is coming up through a gap in the cloud, turning the whole sky yellow, pink and violet and laying a path of light across the water towards the men.

The painter of the sea

The title comes from an old sailors’ belief that waves come in series and that the ninth is the largest and most dangerous. Aivazovsky, born to an Armenian family in the Crimean port of Feodosia, spent his long career painting the sea, and he worked largely from memory rather than in front of the waves. Light shining through water was the effect he was famous for, and this is the best known of all his pictures.

Where it hangs

It belongs to the State Russian Museum in Saint Petersburg and measures 221 by 332 centimetres.

About this print

Made from a 5,090-pixel photograph of the original, enough to print sharply at up to about 33 inches on its longest side.

Sources: State Russian Museum, Saint Petersburg · Wikidata Q1070896 · Wikimedia Commons