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  • RECORD FOR RUSSIAN MASTERPIECE AT SOTHEBY’S IN LONDON

    Ivan Konstantinovich Aivazovsky’s View of Constantinople and the Bosphorus sold for £3,233,250. (Click on image to enlarge).

    There was a record for Russian artist Ivan Konstantinovich Aivazovsky (1817-1900) at Sotheby’s in London today. His 1856 View of Constantinople and the Bosphorus sold for £3,233,250 to an anonymous buyer on the telephone.  There was spirited bidding from at least five bidders in the saleroom and on the telephone. The Russian masterpiece had been estimated at £1.2 – 1.8 million. Aivazovsky first visited Constantinople in 1845 as part of his duties as official painter to the Russian Admiralty. Completed in 1856, View of Constantinople and the Bosphorus celebrates the beauty and dynamism of a busy port, with the Nusretiye Mosque – an important landmark for navigation of the Bosphorus – to the right of the painting.

    It was the top lot in the Orientalist sale of 33 lots of painting, drawing and sculpture depicting Turkey, the Middle East, and North Africa. The sale brought in  £5,586,000.

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