The Survivors

A crowded lifeboat drifts across a wild sea in this 1895 painting by Ivan Aivazovsky. The people packed inside have survived some disaster, and they cling to one another as the waves toss their small wooden vessel. Above them the sky is split in two. Heavy storm clouds crowd the left side, while a soft warm light glows on the right, quietly suggesting that the danger may be passing. Aivazovsky was a Russian-Armenian artist who grew up along the shores of the Black Sea, and his deep connection to the water runs through nearly everything he made.

Few painters have captured the sea quite the way he did. The turquoise waves here appear to shine from inside, giving them a beauty that feels genuinely threatening at the same time. Rather than sitting by the coast with an easel, Aivazovsky worked mostly from memory, trusting his mind to recall the exact feel of moving water. He produced an astonishing 6,000 or so paintings over his lifetime, returning again and again to scenes of shipwrecks and rescue. That tension between terror and faith gives his storm pictures their lasting pull, with a single ray of light almost always holding out the promise that survival is still within reach.