Isaac Levitan

By Alexei Fiodorov-Davydov

Isaac Levitan was one of the greatest landscape painters of the nineteenth century not only in Russian, but in European art as well. He created works of undying artistic merit. His art is for all time and for all people because it absorbed into itself the woes, the joys and the social realities of its age, because it converted that which men lived by into sublime works of art and translated the author’s emotions into lyrical images of his native land. At the end of the nineteenth century the landscape was one of the foremost genres in Russian painting. It was this influence that shaped Levitan’s art, an art fully and by right symbolic of the finest achievements of Russian landscape painting.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Parkstone International
• Release date: Dec 9, 2019
• ISBN: 9781644618790

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Author: Alexei Fiodorov-Davydov

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No part of this publication may be reproduced or adapted without the permission of the copyright holder, throughout the world. Unless otherwise specified, copyright on the works reproduced lies with the respective photographers, artists, heirs or estates. Despite intensive research, it has not always been possible to establish copyright ownership. Where this is the case, we would appreciate notification.

ISBN: 978-1-64461-879-0

Alexei Fiodorov-Davydov

ISAAC LEVITAN

Contents

HIS LIFE

LEVITAN AND HIS TIME

NOTES

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

A

Above Eternal Rest, 1893-1894

After the Rain, Plyos, 1889

The Apiary, 1885

At the edge of the Mediterranean, 1890

At the Park, 1880

At the seaside. Crimea, 1886

At the water’s edge, early 1890s

Autumn day, Sokolniki, 1879

Autumn landscape with a church, 1890s

Autumn landscape with hunter, 1880

Autumn, 1896

B

Before the Thunderstorm, 1879

Before the Thunderstorm, 1889-1900

Birch Grove, 1885-1889

Boats, The Volga, 1889

C

Canal at Venice, (study), 1890

Cloudy Day. Stubble, 1890s

Cornflowers, 1894

Crimean Landscape, 1886

D

Deep Waters, 1892

Dusk. Moon, 1899

E

Early Spring, 1898

Evening Bells, 1892

Evening on the Volga, 1888

Evening, Boats on the Bank, late 1880s

Evening. Phyos the Golden, 1889

Evening. Train moving away, 1890s

F

Ferns in a forest, 1895

Field after Harvest

First greenery. May, (study), 1883

First greenery. May, 1888

Fog. Autumn, 1899

Forest. Sunny day, 1883-1884

Fresh Wind, The Volga, 1895

G

Golden autumn. Hamlet, 1889

Gray Day, 1895

The Great Road Avenue of Birches, late 1897

H

The Haymaking, 1900

Haystacks. Twilight, 1899

High Waters, 1885

Horse-Drawn Sled in the Winter, 1860-1900

I

Illumination of the Kremlin, 1896

In the Holy Wood (Snegurocbka), 1885

In the Wild North, 1891

The Istra late afternoon, 1885

L

Lake Como, 1894

Lake. Barns on the edge of a wood (study), 1898-1899

The Lake. Rus, 1899-1900

Landscape with a farm

Landscape with a River, undated

Last days of Autumn, 1894-1898

The last rays of the sun, 1899

Last Snow (study), 1895

Late Autumn, 1884-1888

Levitan. Late 1890s

M

March, 1895

Marsh at evening, 1882

May. The First Green (sketch), 1883

Meadow on the edge of a wood, 1898

Moonlit Night. Village, 1897

Mountain range, Mont Blanc (study)

Mountains. The Crimea, 1886

N / O

Near Bordiguera. Northern Italy, 1890

On the river Volga, 1888

Overgrown pond with grass, 1887

Overgrown pond, 1887

P

Path in the forest, 1881

Path, 1899

Q / R

Quiet Abode, 1890

Rainstorn, 1889

Ravine, 1898

S

Savinskaya Sloboda, 1884

Self-portrait, undated

Sheaves and a Village Beyond the River, 1881

Sheaves and a Village, 1881

The Silent Monestary, 1890

Snowbound Garden, 1880s

The Soura seen from the high bank, 1887

Spring Flood (sketch), c. 1897

Spring Flood, 1897

Spring in the forest, 1882

Spring time in italy, 1890

Stillness, 1898

Stormy Day, 1897

Summer evening. Fence, 1900

Sunny autumn day, 1897

Sunny Day, 1876-1877

Sunny day, 1898

Sunny day. Village, 1898

T

Trail in the forest. Ferns, circa 1895

Twilight, 1900

Twilight. Moon, 1899

V

Village Savvinskaya near Zvenigorod, 1884

The Vladimirka Road, 1892

Levitan. Late 1890s. Photography.

HIS LIFE

Isaak Levitan was one of the greatest landscape painters of the nineteenth century not only in Russian but in European art as well. He created works of undying artistic merit. His art is for all time and for all people because it absorbed into itself the woes, the joys and the social realities of its age because it converted that which men lived by into sublime works of art and translated the author’s emotions into lyrical images of his native land. At the end of the nineteenth century, the landscape was one of the foremost genres in Russian painting. It was this influence that shaped Levitan’s art, an art fully and by right symbolic of the finest achievements of Russian landscape painting.

Few materials pertaining to Levitan’s biography have survived. His personal archives (letters and probably documents too) were destroyed on his orders by his brother Adolf shortly before the artist’s death. Nonetheless, in broad outline, we know Levitan’s biography well enough. It is quite typical for an artist hailing from the lower-middle class (the raznochintsy) who paid his way through art school with copper coins and who achieved success and recognition on the strength of his talent alone but at the price of dire privation and gruelling toil.

Isaak Ilyich Levitan was born on August 30 (18 Old Style), 1860, in the little town of Kybartai (now Vilkaviskis District, Lithuanian SSR). His father was quite an educated man for his time who not only graduated from a rabbinical seminary but picked up a degree of secular education on his own as well, an education which, incidentally, included the mastery of German and French. This provided him with a living in Kovno (now Kaunas, Lithuanian SSR) where he gave private lessons and later worked as an interpreter for a French construction company then building a railway bridge in the vicinity.

At the beginning of the 1870s Ilya Levitan desirous, evidently, of finding more fertile fields for his abilities, moved with his family to Moscow. The large family (Isaak had an elder brother, Adolf, and two sisters) led a hand-to-mouth existence. For the young Levitan conditions became almost unbearable when his mother died in 1875 and his father two years later. The Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture which Levitan entered in 1873 even waived his tuition because of extreme poverty and in recognition of his singular success in art. Levitan was homeless in Moscow, sleeping alternately in the homes of relatives or friends and sometimes even spending the night in the empty classrooms of the School. Now and then the School’s night watchman took pity on the youth and let him into his cubicle for the night; another watchman, who sold breakfasts on the side, would provide the lad with up to five kopecks’ worth of victuals on credit. Levitan’s good showing in the academic year of 1874-75 induced the School’s Board of Teachers to reward him with a box of paints and brushes. By that time the fledgeling artist was beginning to show a preference for landscape painting, and in the autumn of 1876, Alexei Savrasov took Levitan into his studio. In March 1877 two of Levitan’s canvases — Evening and Sunny Day. Spring — were displayed in the students’ section of the 5th Moscow Exhibition of the Society for Circulating Art Exhibitions, the largest and most influential creative association of realist artists in the country, active between 1870 and 1923 (also known as the Itinerants’ Society). Autumn Day. The Sokolniki Park, Levitan’s entry for his own School’s 2nd Students’ Exhibition of 1879-80, was purchased by Pavel Tretyakov, the founder of the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow, which meant that the artist was beginning to achieve public recognition.

Sunny Day, 1876-1877. Oil on canvas,