Black Sea Fleet in the Bay of Theodosia, just before the Crimean War

Painted in 1890 and held at the Feodosia gallery that bears his name, this large historical canvas depicts the Black Sea Fleet anchored in the bay of Feodosia — Aivazovsky's own hometown — in the years before the Crimean War. The work carries personal and patriotic significance: Feodosia (known as Theodosia in antiquity, Kaffa under the Genoese) was the place of Aivazovsky's birth and the city where he built his home and gallery. The Black Sea Fleet had a charged meaning in Russian consciousness — it was the instrument of Russian naval ambition in the south, and its destruction was one of the most painful provisions of the Treaty of Paris that ended the Crimean War in 1856. Painting the fleet in its pre-war splendor in 1890, more than three decades after those events, was an act of commemoration and perhaps quiet mourning for a naval power that had been dramatically curtailed. The bay setting allowed Aivazovsky to combine his twin specialties: naval portraiture and coastal landscape.

The fleet is arranged across the middle distance with careful attention to the hierarchy and silhouettes of different vessel classes. Aivazovsky uses morning or evening light — the title specifies 'just before' as a temporal condition — to cast long reflections across calm bay water. The surrounding hills of Feodosia are rendered with characteristic softness, their outlines dissolving into warm atmospheric haze.