In 1845, Ivan Aivazovsky was granted the title of academician and, by imperial decree, he was assigned to the Main Naval Headquarters as an artist with the right to wear the uniform of the Naval Ministry. During one of his sea voyages, Emperor Nicholas Ist told him: ‘Aivazovsky! I am the king of the earth, and you are the king of the sea! ”

Aivazovsky painted most of the works from memory, so great was his knowledge of the sea and his memory of what the sea looked like night and day, winter and summer, in calm and storm. The marine painter believed that it was impossible to catch the living natural elements with paints and brush, so it was pointless to paint gusts of wind, lightning and waves from nature.

The “View of the Black Sea” was painted in 1873 with oil on canvas. It represents one of the author’s favorite motifs: an early summer morning, calm sea surface stretching to the horizon, and the vast sky with golden pink clouds. At this time, the artist was influenced by the landscapes of the Itinerants school and therefore gradually changed his artistic method: he abandoned bright colors, and mostly used a monochrome bluish palette.

In the same 1873, an exhibition of paintings by Ivan Aivazovsky took place in Florence. His works got many positive reviews from the Florentine Academy of Arts. Aivazovsky became one of the best known representatives of the Russian school of painting worldwide. This title gave him the right to present a self-portrait created in 1874 in the Florentine Gallery Uffizi. Russian portrait painter Orest Kiprensky was the first to be afforded such honor.

Before the revolution of 1917, the painting by Ivan Aivazovsky ‘View of the Black Sea’ was kept in the collection of Count Pavel Stroganov, in his estate Znamenskoye in the Tambov province. Then it was transferred to the collection of the Tambov Museum of Local Lore, and from 1961, it was on show in the Tambov Art Gallery