IVAN KONSTANTINOVICH AIVAZOVSKY |Chapel by the Coast on a Moonlit Night

Acquired by Jacob Andreas Whist in Petrograd, circa 1915

Thence by descent to the present owners

Chapel by the Coast on a Moonlit Night has remained in the same family since the mid-1910s when it was acquired by Jacob Andreas Whist (1885-1967), a Norwegian businessman and entrepreneur. Originally from Korgen in the north of Norway, Whist moved to Russia in 1901 to join his two older brothers' trading business in Murmansk. He then settled in St Petersburg where he was active in the travel industry, opening the St Petersburg branch of the Norwegian travel agency Bennets in 1915. Whist lived in the Bashmakov House on the Moyka embankment within close proximity of his office on Nevsky Prospect, renting from the widow of the Swedish entrepreneur and engineer Ludvig Nobel (1833-1888), who had purchased the building in the 1870s.

The economic and political turmoil of 1917 left Whist with no alternatives other than to close up shop and leave the country. Initially arrested and interrogated, he escaped before the political situation escalated any further. Before his departure for his native Norway Whist offered a Russian noble lady to enter into a pro forma marriage with him in order to help her to emigrate to Canada where her relatives resided. The marriage ceremony was conducted at the Norwegian embassy in Petrograd, and soon after the newlyweds departed for Tallinn, whence the noble lady went to Canada and Whist to Oslo. Whist managed to save his belongings, including the present work, by sending them to Murmansk, from where they were subsequently shipped to Norway with the help of his elder brother Ole.

The present work is included in the numbered archive of the artist's work compiled by Gianni Caffiero and Ivan Samarine.