Isaac Levitan

Below in short paper I put together for an art history class final at the Russian Museum. I found the painter to be very interesting, and thought I'd share my paper with you. Many of the notes were taken from websites that were written in Russian Cyrillic, and to translate it, since I'm not that talented...yet, I used a website called babelfish.yahoo.com which I recommend to anyone trying to translate large passages and even entire website pages.

Elizabeth Moskalenko
Arts and Culture of Saint Petersburg
16 October 2008

Isaac Levitan

Isaac Levitan was born on August 18, 1860 in the small town of Kibarty, Lithuania, to a poor but well educated Jewish family. In 1870, Levitan moved with his family to Moscow and in 1873 started to attend the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture. After he spent a year in a copying class he moved into that of a naturalistic style and soon there after a landscape class. His teachers at the university included Alexei Savrasov, Vasily Perov, and Vasily Polenov. When he was only fifteen, his mother passed away, and two years later, after being seriously ill and unable to provide for the family, Levitan’s father passed away as well – causing Levitan and his brothers to enter a beggarly way of life. His institution waved his tuition fee “because his extreme poverty and in recognition of his singular success in art”. He rose from his abject poverty to become perhaps the greatest landscape painter in Russian history.

His work was particularly influenced by his two instructors, Savrasov and Polenov. But by 1879, at the age of nineteen, Levitan developed his own style and his paintings were enthusiastically received at exhibitions. During the 1880s the painter explored different styles such as that of Ivan Shishkin and Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot.

"Autumn Day. Sokolniki"

(1879 Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow)

The artist made his first trip to the Crimea in 1884, and in 1887 to the Volga – where he managed to capture the poetry and emotion of the landscape in an unprecedented manner. The boundless expanses of alternating forests, fields, large towns, and tiny villages inspired him with new artistic material. Levitan’s Volga landscapes are quite varied and particularly noteworthy are the works:

“Golden Autumn in the Village”

(1889, Russian Museum, St. Petersburg), and

“Birch Grove”

(1889 Tretyakovskoy Gallery, Moscow),

in which Levitan conveys with great immediacy his perception of the various states of nature. In a letter to Chekov he writes, “I cannot be even vaguely happy, or at ease, I cannot understand myself, without painting. Never before have I loved nature as I do now or been-so sensitive to it”.

In the 1890s, while traveling through Europe, Levitan familiarized himself with working “en plein air” meaning in the open air, or painting outdoors. And also through his travels discovered the works of Parisian Impressionists. A good example of this influence from Impressionism or Post Impressionism is one of Levitan’s last paintings

“The Lake: Russia”

(1899-1900)

in which the free and dynamic brushstrokes and the brightness of colors indicate perhaps Levitan’s familiarly with the works of Vincent Van Gogh.

For a long time it was considered that in Russia there was no nature capable of admiration or of becoming a theme for serious work -- only a gray, faceless mask. The work of Levitan’s contemporaries resembled much to that of Italian and French pictures. However, Levitan purposely chose “simple” subjects – avoiding painting outwardly spectacular places. In this way he became a poet of the paintbrush with his poetry conveying the seemingly simplest words. And out of these simple words – roads, melting snow, fishing lines, broken fences, gnarled trees, spring – magic appeared. Levitan loved life’s little nuances – the strange smell of wet snow, the moist spring black earth, the heavy drops of rain on a hot stuffy day. This was bliss to Levitan, and through his careful study of life in nature, the life so often overlooked by the everyday person, he transformed the perception of the Russian landscape.

Levitan expresses himself:

" I never yet loved so nature, it was not so it was sensitive to it, I never still so strongly felt this godly something, spilled in everything, but that everyone sees that even cannot be named, since it does not yield to reason, analysis, but it understands itself by love. Without this feeling there cannot be a true artist. Many will not understand, they will name, perhaps, romantic nonsense - let!… But this my enlightenment for me is the source of deep sufferings. It can be that more tragic, how to feel the infinite beauty of that surrounding, to notice secret, to see god in everything and not to know how, realizing its weakness, to express these large sensations…"

"Spring Flood"

(1897 Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow)

Levitan’s lyrical poetry was full of subjective feeling. In the years after 1880s, Levitan’s work took on a rare emotional photosensitivity. Levitan mastered mixing the subtle shades of green that replicated the life, hope, and happiness of his sprite subjects. He could communicate the tenderness of young grass beneath that of an aged oak. It is obvious that he felt a strong connection to nature and was known to disappear for periods of time, into the woods, contemplating the special life. But even during the greatest admiration of the beauty of life the depth of his soul always held a secret melancholy. Early in his years of instructing at the University Levitan began the development of the terrible disease neurasthenia. And his disease was reflected in his mood and emotions which his paintings managed to capture. Although there was this secret melancholy it was the beauty of life, or nature that kept him alive – he had a “terrible thirst” for it, as Chekov once said.

"Springtime. The Last Snow"

(1895 The Russian Museum, St. Petersburg)

“The Lake” (1899-1900, Russian Museum, St. Petersburg) was the last picture Levitan painted. He considered calling the piece Russia; it was to be a kind of synthesis of all his searching. The Lake is a generalized image of the beautiful Russian countryside -- Russia, the Motherland. He was not able to complete the painting as he desired. On July 22, 1900, the artist passed away from a pulmonary hemorrhage. His influential art heritage is left behind in a collection of over a thousand paintings – watercolors, graphics, illustrations, and pastels.

Sources:

Sources:

http://isaak-levitan.ru/

http://www.rollins.edu/Foreign_Lang/Russian/frame3.html

http://isaaclevitan.ru/

http://artroots.com/ra/bio/levitan/isaaklevitanbio.htm

http://www.russianartgallery.org/levitan/biosketch.htm

http://www.cozy-corner.com/art/art_painters_levitan.htm

Wikipedia

http://babelfish.yahoo.com/ (translation of Russian text)

paintings taken from: http://www.abcgallery.com/L/levitan/levitan.html