For which the artist Levitan was twice expelled from Moscow and other little-known facts about the brilliant landscape painter

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

Isaac Levitan is one of the greatest artists of Russia at the end of the 19th century, an unsurpassed master of Russian "mood landscapes". In life and work, he had to face considerable difficulties. And, above all, it is anti-Semitism, which Levitan faced twice. It is likely that it was these problems of the life path that influenced the fact that Levitan did not like to portray people in his paintings.

Levitan was born into an educated but poor Jewish family

Isaac Levitan was born on August 30, 1860 in the small town of Kybarti, which is now part of Lithuania. His father, Ilya Abramovich, was the son of a rabbi and an educated man who worked as a private tutor in French and German and later as a translator for a French construction company. But at the same time, the family was very poor and could hardly make ends meet. Isaac's mother, a housewife, struggled to care for Isaac, his brother Abel, and sisters Teresa and Emma. However, both parents encouraged their two sons' early interest in art. Young Isaac from childhood loved to paint landscapes, trees and grass.

Levitan learned painting thanks to his brother

In the early 1870s. Isaac and his family moved to Moscow. Isaac's elder brother, an artist, played a decisive role in the choice of Isaac's life path. He often took the boy with him to study and art exhibitions. When Isaac was 13 years old, he was accepted as a student at the School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture, where the boy studied with Polenov and Savrasov. The writer Grigory Gorin later wrote about Levitan: “Isaac Levitan was a great Russian artist. And he said so about himself … When he was told: but you are a Jew! He said: yes, I am a Jew. So what? And nothing. Smart people agreed that he was a great Russian artist and a Jew!"

Levitan and Chekhov were strong friends

One of the important pages of Levitan's biography is his friendship with A. P. Chekhov. Anton Chekhov and Isaac Levitan are the same age. The writer and artist met in 1879, when young Anton Chekhov moved to Moscow, where his entire family already lived. One of his brothers Chekhov, Nikolai, was already friends with Levitan, a fellow student of the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture. At the 19th exhibition of "Peredvizhniki" in 1891, viewers saw a painting by the already well-known artist Levitan "Quiet Abode".

It was after her that they started talking about Levitan not just as an accomplished artist, but as a master and exponent of the national spirit. Chekhov himself wrote beautifully about the painting in a letter to his sister Maria: “I was at a traveling exhibition. Levitan celebrates the name day of his magnificent muse. His picture makes a splash. In any case, Levitan's success is not ordinary. In Russian literature and painting, it is extremely rare to find such like-minded people who would be as close in style and approach to artistic tasks as Chekhov and Levitan. It is no coincidence that their names are often mentioned side by side in popular literature.

Levitan did not like to portray people: truth or myth?

It is widely believed that Levitan did not know how to portray people - nothing more than a myth. Of course, as a student of the landscape class, he was not required to have a perfect knowledge of anatomy. Moreover, he was not very interested in this topic: "… I want to write a haystack, there are no bones or anatomy in it …". However, in the early 1880s, when he worked in the editorial office of illustrated magazines, he repeatedly had to portray human figures. Since the fall of 1884, Levitan attended morning watercolor lessons and evening drawing lessons held at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture (MHU) by Vasily Polenov, as well as evening drawing lessons, which were always held with living models. And, I must say, the human images of Levitan, drawn in these lessons, fascinated his colleagues with a confident mastery of form.

Police expelled Levitan from Moscow

In 1879, the police evicted Levitan from Moscow to the dacha district of Saltykovka. The fact is that a royal decree was issued prohibiting Jews from settling in the Russian capital. At that time, Isaac's father and mother, who had not lived in Moscow for long, had already died, leaving Isaac with his brother and two sisters on the street. Levitan was only 18 years old. He was very poor, almost destitute.

Favorite topic - autumn

In the year of exile, Levitan wrote the famous “Autumn Day. Sokolniki ". This was his first painting and the only landscape with a human figure. It is interesting that the heroine was added not by the artist himself, but by his friend from the School of Painting and brother of the famous writer Nikolai Chekhov. This was the last time Levitan allowed anyone to make changes to his canvases. And after this work, people never appeared on his canvases. Around this period, Levitan's favorite theme begins - the image of autumn. Even spring on his canvases often resembles the mood of an autumn day. This time of year is very diverse in the artist's paintings. Levitan created about a hundred "autumn" paintings, not counting sketches.

Second expulsion of Jews after 13 years

In September 1892, Levitan was forced to leave Moscow again when Emperor Alexander III ordered the exile of all Jews. Friends of Levitan in Moscow and St. Petersburg protested, demanding his return. And, finally, the authorities were forced to reverse their decision regarding the artist in order to avoid a public scandal (at that time Levitan was widely known not only in Russia, but also abroad).

Currently, Levitan is one of the leading contemporary painters in the landscape genre and is considered one of the most influential figures in Russian painting of the 19th century.

Especially for landscape lovers, we have collected paintings by Russian classical artists, after which you want to leave the city … Enjoy!