Isaac Levitan

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Image:Isaac Levitan selfportrait1880.jpg Isaac Ilyich Levitan (Russian language: Исаак Ильич Левитан, August 30, 1860 - July 22 (August 4 new style), 1900) was a classical Russian landscape art painter who advanced the genre of the mood landscape.

Isaac Levitan was born in a shtetl of Kibarti, Kovno region, Lithuania, into a poor but educated Jewish family. His father, a son of a rabbi, completed a Yeshiva and in addition was self-educated. He taught German and French in Kovno and later worked as a translator at a railway bridge construction for a French building company. In the beginning of 1870 the Levitan family moved to Moscow.

In September 1873, Isaac Levitan entered the Moscow School of painting, sculpturing and architecture where his older brother Avel already studied for two years. After a year in the copying class Isaac transferred into a naturalistic class, and soon into a landscape class. Levitan's teachers were the famous Savrasov, V.G. Perov and V.D. Polenov. For his successes, Levitan was awarded with a box of paints and two dozen brushes.

In 1875, his mother died, and his father fell seriously ill (he died in 1877) and became unable to support four children. The family slipped into abject poverty. As patronage for Levitan's talent and achievements and to keep him in the school, he was given a scholarship.

Image:Levitan Sokolniki Autumn 1879.jpg In 1877, Isaac Levitan's works were first publicly exhibited and were positively recognized by the press. After Alexander Soloviev's assassination attempt on Alexander II, in May 1879, mass deportations of Jews from big cities of the Russian Empire forced the family to move to a suburb, Saltykovka, but in the fall, with pressure on the officials from art devotees, Isaac Levitan was allowed back. In 1880 his painting Осенний день. Сокольники (Autumn day. Sokolniki) was bought by famous philanthropist and art collector Pavel Mikhailovich Tretyakov. (See also Tretyakov gallery)

In the spring 1884, Levitan participated in the mobile art exhibition by the group known as the Peredvizhniki and since 1891 became a member of the Peredvizhniki partnership. During the study in the Moscow School of painting, sculpturing and architecture, Levitan befriended Konstantin Korovin, Mikhail Nesterov, architect Fyodor Shekhtel, and painter Mikhail Chekhov whose famous brother writer Anton Chekhov became the closest friend of the artist for life. Levitan often visited Chekhov and some think Levitan was in love with his sister, Maria Pavlovna Chekhova.

Image:Levitan older.jpg He collaborated with Chekhov brothers in the illustrated magazine "Moscow" in the beginning of 1880s he illustrated M. Fabritsius edition "Kremlin". In 1885-1886 together with Korovin he wrote scenery of performances of the Private Russian opera of S.I.Mamontov.

Image:Isaak Ilitsch Lewitan 002.jpg In the end of the 1880s he visited the "drawing evening" in Polenov’s house. The landscape painter deeply felt both the lyrical, revealing, unique charm and quiet greatness of Russian nature. Levitan practically did not paint urban landscapes. With the exception of the (currently lost) "View of Simonov monastery", mentioned by Nesterov, Moscow is present only in the painting "Illumination of the Kremlin". In the end of the 1870s he worked a lot in the vicinities of Moscow, and created the special variant of the "landscape of mood", in which the shape and condition of nature are spiritualized, and become carriers of conditions of the human soul ("Autumn day. Sokolniki", 1879). During work in Ostankino, he painted fragments of the mansion’s house and park, but basically he was fond of poetry chamber places in the forest or modest countryside.

In the summer of 1890 Levitan went to Yuryevets (Юрьевец) and among numerous landscapes and etudes he wrote "The View of Krivooserski monastery". So the plan of one of his best pictures, "The silent monastery", was born. The image of a silent monastery and planked bridges over the river, connecting it with the world around, expressed deep reflections of the artist about life. It is known that this picture made a strong impression on Chekhov.

In 1897, already world-famous, he was elected to the Imperial Academy of Arts and in 1898 he was named the head of the Landscape Studio at his alma mater.

Image:Isaac Levitan Ozero Rus 1900.jpg Levitan met the last year of his life (1900) at Chekhov’s in Crimea. In spite of the painter being terminally ill, his last works are full of light. They reflect tranquility and the eternal beauty of Russian nature.

He was buried in Dorogomilov Jewish cemetery and in April 1941 was reburied in the Novodevichy Cemetery, next to Chekhov's necropolis. Levitan did not have a family or children.

Isaac Levitan's hugely influential art heritage consists of more than a thousand paintings, among them watercolors, pastels, graphics, and illustrations.

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