What's wrong with the market for Russian art?

Russian 19th century paintings are selling at ridiculously high prices around the globe. Uppsala Auktionskammare recently announced that this Aivazovsky is expected to bring in almost half a million dollars.

Though some of the Russian painters from this time period are really good – most notably the groundbreaking Ilya Repin – Aivazovsky isn’t one of them. I won’t claim myself to any sort of expert on 19th century art, but even I can tell that he has an obvious lack of any real craftsmanship, that his paintings are often badly composed and that his works are poorly finished.

Interestingly enough one of his most interesting pieces, Pushkin’s Farwell to the Sea, is a cooperation with the mentioned Repin. Despite the fact that Aivazovsky was established and actually became rather wealthy during his own lifetime, he could not make a decent portrait and often failed to do landscapes. He produced over 6.000 paintings, among which there are certainly some highlights, but most of them are mediocre at best.