OIL PAINTING: The Battle of Revel, 1846
When Aivazovsky began his career, Russian art was still dominated by Romanticism and it was the romantic mood which set the terms for Russian landscape painting in the second half of the nineteenth century. It is scarcely surprising then to discover romantic elements both in Aivazovsky's early paintings , and in the majority of his later ones. One reflection of this is his choice of subjects - again and again we find Aivazovsky depicting shipwrecks, raging sea battles and storms -''The Battle of Revel''.