Isaac Levitan

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Isaac Levitan
Isaac Levitan selfportrait1880.jpg
Issac Levitan, Self portrait, 1880
Born August 30, 1860
Wirballen, Augustów Governorate, Congress Poland, Russian Empire
Died August 4 [O.S. July 22] 1900 (aged 39)

Isaac Ilyich Levitan (Russian: Исаа́к Ильи́ч Левита́н; August 30, 1860 – August 4 [O.S. July 22] 1900) was a classical Russian landscape painter who advanced the genre of the "mood landscape."

Life and work[edit]


Isaac Levitan was born in a shtetl of Wirballen, Augustów Governorate in Congress Poland, a part of the Russian Empire (present-day Lithuania) into a poor but educated Jewish family. His father Elyashiv Levitan was the son of a rabbi, completed a Yeshiva and was self-educated. He taught German and French in Kowno and later worked as a translator at a railway bridge construction for a French building company. At the beginning of 1870 the Levitan family moved to Moscow.


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

Early work[edit]

Autumn day. Sokolniki. 1879
Levitan. Portrait by Valentin Serov (1893)
Lake. Russia 1900. The last, unfinished Levitan painting.

In 1877, Isaac Levitan's works were first publicly exhibited and earned favorable recognition from 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 the suburb of Saltykovka, but in the fall officials responded to pressure from art devotees, and Levitan was allowed to return. 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 of 1884 Levitan participated in the mobile art exhibition by the group known as the Peredvizhniki and in 1891 became a member of the Peredvizhniki partnership. During his study in the Moscow School of painting, sculpturing and architecture, Levitan befriended Konstantin Korovin, Mikhail Nesterov, architect Fyodor Shekhtel, and the painter Nikolay Chekhov, whose famous brother Anton Chekhov became the artist's closest friend. Levitan often visited Chekhov and some think Levitan was in love with his sister, Maria Pavlovna Chekhova.[citation needed]


In the 1880s he participated in the drawing and watercolor gatherings at Polenov’s house.[1]

The landscape of mood[edit]


Late life[edit]

In the summer of 1890 Levitan went to Yuryevets (Юрьевец) and among numerous landscapes and etudes he painted 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 outside world, expressed the artist's spiritual reflections. It is known that this picture made a strong impression on Chekhov.[citation needed]




Isaac Levitan's hugely influential art heritage[2] consists of more than a thousand paintings, among them watercolors, pastels, graphics, and illustrations.


A minor planet 3566 Levitan, discovered by Soviet astronomer Lyudmila Zhuravlyova in 1979 is named after him.[3]


See also[edit]


  1. ^ Fiodorov-Davydov, Alexei: "Levitan", page 166-7. Aurora Art Publishers, 1988.
  2. ^ Fiodorov-Davydov, p.18, 1988.
  3. ^ Schmadel, Lutz D. (2003). Dictionary of Minor Planet Names (5th ed.). New York: Springer Verlag. p. 300. ISBN 3-540-00238-3. 


  • (A. A. Fyodorov-Davidov: Levitan, Aurora Art Publishers, Leningrad, 1981)
  • (A. King: Isaak Levitan. Lirical Landscape, Philipp Wilson Publisheres Ltd., London, 2006)
  • (L. Mehulic: Isaac Ilych Levitan and Evening Bells from The Mimara Museum, Muzej Mimara, Zagreb, 2009)

External links[edit]