"Bringing the Museum to You"

The Cyber Art Show continues our study of Russian  landscape painters in the Public Domain with the second of three 12-piece Exhibitions of works by Isaac Ilyich Levitan (1860-1900).

 

Isaac Levitan was born in a shtetl of Wirballen, a Province of Kowno in Lithuania, which was then in the Russian Empire. He came from a poor but educated Jewish family. His father Elyashiv was the son of a rabbi who taught German and French and worked as a translator a French building company. The Levitan family moved to Moscow in 1870.

In 1873, Isaac entered the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture where his older brother Avel had already studied for two years. Levitan studied under the famous painters Alexei Savrasov, Vasily Perov and Vasily Polenov, advancing from nature studies to landscape classes. Unfortunately, in 1875, Isaac’s mother died and father fell seriously ill. As a result of his talent and achievements, Levitan was awarded a scholarship.

 

Isaac’s first public exhibitions brought favorable reviews from the press in 1877. In  1884, Levitan participated in a mobile art exhibition with the Russian artsts’ group known as the Peredvizhniki, becoming a member in 1891. While studying at the Moscow School, Isaac befriended Konstantin Korovin, Mikhail Nesterov, architect Fyodor Shekhtel, and the painter Nikolay Chekhov, whose famous brother Anton Chekhov became the artist's closest friend.

 

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

 

Levitan spent the last year of his life at Chekhov’s home in Crimea. In spite of the effects of a terminal illness, his last works are increasingly filled with light. They reflect tranquility and the eternal beauty of Russian nature.

 

He died July 22, 1900 and was buried in Dorogomilovo Jewish cemetery. In 1941 Levitan's remains were moved to the Novodevichy Cemetery, next to Chekhov's necropolis.

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