The paintings "The Ninth Wave," "The Black Sea," "Among the Waves" by I.K. Aivazovsky, the largest Russian marine painter of the 19th century, are widely known and loved by the audience. The book offered to readers is a narrative about the life and work of I.K. Aivazovsky, a tireless painter, a passionate lover of the sea, whose life was devoted to painting, and all love was given to the sea. In front of the readers there is a whole gallery of his contemporaries with whom he met: Pushkin, Bryullov, Belinsky, Turner, Taglioni, Verdi and many others. The story unfolds against the background of paintings of the life of Feodosia, St. Petersburg, Sevastopol, Rome, Amsterdam. For their work, the authors used numerous documentary and archival materials.