Birth of Vartan Makhokhian (May 31, 1869)

Ivan (Hovhannes) Aivazovsky is the premier seascape painter in Armenian art, but his younger contemporary, Vartan Makhokhian (also spelled Mahokian), comes to a close second.

Makhokhian was born on May 31, 1869, in Trebizond (Trabzon). His father was a merchant who made sure that his six children had a good education. Makhokhian took an interest in drawing at the local Armenian school, and learned to paint when he continued his studies at the Sanasarian College in Erzerum (1882-1887), before returning to his hometown after five years of study. His artistic interests were not limited to painting, since he also learned to play violin and studied music theory.

His uncle persuaded Makhokhian to pursue an artistic career. At the age of twenty-two, he began studies at the Berlin Academy of Arts under the guidance of Eugen Bracht and Hans Gude. After graduating in 1894, he traveled to Crimea, where he met Aivazovsky and painted various sea scenes. He went back to Trebizond in 1895 and became a witness of the Hamidian massacres.

He fled to the port of Batum, in Georgia, and then to Europe. He held one of his first exhibitions in 1900 in Berlin. For the next two decades, he would be the subject of many articles in the European press. In 1904 he was accepted into the Berlin Artists' Association. He traveled to Egypt, where he had exhibitions in Alexandria and Cairo, then to Denmark, and finally settled in the island of Capri, in Italy, a place chosen as residence by well-known artists and intellectuals. Makhokhian returned to Germany in 1907 and participated in various exhibitions in Berlin, Düsseldorf, and Munich.

"Seaside scene. Norway" (Vartan Makhokhian)

The painter returned once again to his hometown in 1908, after the Ottoman Constitution was restored. He continued working there for the next six years, and after the beginning of World War I, Makhokhian moved again to Europe and this time he settled in Nice, France, where he would remain until the end of his life. He composed the symphony “The Sobbing of Armenia” from 1915-1917, reacting to the loss of his family in Trebizonda during the genocide, which was first performed in Monte Carlo (1918). He participated in the Paris Salon in 1921, 1922, 1923, and 1927, and had solo exhibitions in Nice (1918, 1931, 1936), Marseilles (1923), Paris (1925), and Monte Carlo (1932). The painter was awarded the Legion of Honor in 1925 and became a French citizen two years later.

From 1927-1930 Makhokhian also participated in the collective exhibitions of the “Ani” Artistic Society in Paris, and thus became better known in Armenian circles.

After a long illness, the painter passed away in Nice on February 10, 1937, at the age of 67. His works are found in the National Gallery of Armenia, the Art Museum of Nice, the museum of the Mekhitarist Congregation in Venice, and other places, as well as in many private collections.

Birth of Ivan Aivazovsky (July 29, 1817)

Ivan Aivazovsky is considered one of the greatest marine painters in history. Famous Russian story writer Anton Chekhov popularized the winger word “worthy of Aivazovsky’s brush,” used for “describing something ineffably lovely."

Aivazovsky was born Hovhannes Aivazian on July 29, 1817, in Feodosia, a port on the Black Sea in Crimea. He received parochial education at the local St. Sargis Armenian Church and was taught drawing by a local architect. He attended the Russian gymnasium of Simferopol from 1830-1833 and then studied at the Imperial Academy of Arts from 1833-1837, graduating with gold medal two years in advance.

The promising painter was sent by the Academy in 1840 to study in Europe. He first traveled to Venice, where his brother Gabriel was a member of the Mekhitarist Congregation (he would leave the congregation and return to the Armenian Apostolic Church in the 1850s). Aivazovsky studied Armenian manuscripts and became familiar with Armenian art. After a four year sojourn in Italy and France, with visits to half a dozen European countries and prolific exhibitions, he returned to Russia in 1844.

Upon his return, he was appointed academician of the Imperial Academy of Arts, from where he had graduated seven years before, and appointed the official artist of the Russian Navy. After traveling to the Aegean Sea and Constantinople in 1845, he settled in his hometown, Feodosia. The Academy gave him a title of professor of seascape painting in 1847, while the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences elected him a member in the same year.

He married English governess Julia Graves in 1848 and had four daughters. They separated in 1860 and divorced in 1877 with permission from the Armenian Church, since Graves was a Lutheran.

Aivazovsky would receive many honors throughout his life: first non-French artist to receive the Legion d’Honneur in France (1857), Order of the Medjidie (Ottoman Empire, 1857), honorary member of the Moscow Art Society (1857), Order of the Redeemer (Greece, 1859), Order of St. Vladimir (Russia, 1865), Order of Osmanieh (Ottoman Empire, 1874), member of the Academy of Arts of Florence (Italy, 1876), honorary member of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of Stuttgart (Germany, 1878), and others. He held fifty-five solo exhibitions over the course of his career in the Russian Empire, Europe, and the United States (New York, Chicago, and San Francisco, 1893), and participated in many collective exhibitions. He was one of the most prolific artists of his time: he created around 6,000 paintings during his almost sixty-year career. The vast majority of his works are seascapes, but he often depicted battle scenes, Armenian themes, and portraiture. He never painted his pictures from nature, but from memory. His artistic memory was legendary. The Ninth Wave (1850, State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg) is generally considered his masterpiece.

American Shipping off the Rock of Gibraltar, 1873

Aivazovsky visited Russian Armenia for the first time in 1868. The next year, he participated in the opening ceremony of the Suez Canal in Egypt, and became the first artist to paint the Canal. He continued his travels abroad during the next three decades, including a trip to the United States in 1892. In 1880, he opened an art gallery in his Feodosia house, which became the third museum in the Russian Empire, after the Hermitage Museum of St. Petersburg and the Tretyakov Gallery of Moscow. Two years later, he remarried to a young Armenian widow, Anna Burnazian. He said that he “became closer to [his] nation” by marrying her. His career across the civil ranks of Russian government reached its highest position in 1896 when, at the age of 79, he was promoted to the rank of full privy councillor.

Aivazovsky was deeply affected by the Hamidian massacres of 1894 and 1896. He painted a number of works on the subject. More symbolically, he threw the medals given to him by the Ottoman Sultan into the sea and told the Turkish consul in Feodosia: "Tell your bloodthirsty master that I've thrown away all the medals given to me, here are their ribbons, send it to him and if he wants, he can throw them into the seas painted by me." He spent his last years in his hometown, to which he contributed many efforts to its improvement.

Aivazovsky passed away on May 2, 1900, in Feodosia and was buried in the courtyard of the St. Sargis Church. A quote in Classical Armenian from Movses Khorenatsi’s History of Armenia is engraved on his tombstone: “Born as a mortal, left an immortal memory of himself.