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The Ninth Wave
Ivan Aivazovsky · Romanticism & Landscape
- Artist
- Ivan Aivazovsky (1817–1900)
- Date
- 1850
- Dimensions
- 221 x 332 cm
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Location
- Russian Museum, St Petersburg, Russia
The Ninth Wave shows a handful of shipwreck survivors clinging to a broken mast after a night-long storm, as an enormous wave rises in front of them. According to sailors’ legend, the ninth wave in a series is always the most dangerous.
A closer look
The sea is lit by the rising sun, which turns the water and sky into a blaze of gold, green and pink. The survivors, tiny against the mountain of water, wave a piece of cloth in hope of rescue. The warm light gives the scene a note of hope: perhaps the storm is ending and the men will be saved. Aivazovsky painted from memory rather than from life, yet he was famous for the transparency of his waves, which seem lit from within.
History of the painting
Aivazovsky painted The Ninth Wave in 1850, and it was soon acquired by Emperor Nicholas I for the imperial collection, which hung it in the Hermitage. When the Russian Museum of Emperor Alexander III opened in St Petersburg in 1898, devoted to Russian art, the painting was transferred there, and it has been one of its most popular works ever since.