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Isaac Ilyich Levitan (Russian language:
Исаак
Ильич
Левитан,
August 30, 1860 - July 22 (August 4 new style),
1900), a classic Russian landscape painter who
advanced the genre of mood landscape. 

Isaac Levitan was born in a shtetl of Kibarti,
Kovno region, Lithuania, into a poor but educated
Jewish family. His father, a son of a rabbi,
completed a Yeshiva and also was self-educated. He
taught German language|German and French
language|French languages in Kovno and later
worked as a translator at a railway bridge
construction for a French building company. In the
beginning of 1870 the Levitan family moved to
Moscow. 

In September 1873, Isaac Levitan entered the
Moscow School of painting, sculpturing and
architecture where his older brother Avel already
studied for two years. After a year in the copying
class Isaac transferred into a naturalistic class,
and soon into a landscape class. Levitan's
teachers were famous Savrasov, V.G. Perov and V.D.
Polenov. For his successes, Levitan was awarded
with a box of paints and two dozen of brushes. 

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


In 1877 Isaac Levitan's works were first publicly
exhibited and were positively recognized by the
press. In May 1879, mass deportations of Jews from
big cities of Russian Empire forced the family to
move to a suburb Saltykovka, but in the fall, with
the pressure on the officials from the art
devotees, Isaac Levitan was allowed back. In 1880
his painting
Осенний
день.
Сокольн&
#1080;ки (Autumn day. Sokolniki) was
bought by famous philanthropist and art collector
Pavel Mikhailovich Tretyakov. (See also Tretyakov
gallery)

In the spring 1884, Levitan participated in the
mobile art exhibition, also known as the
Peredvizhniki and since 1891 became a member of
the Peredvizhniki partnership. During the study in
the Moscow School of painting, sculpturing and
architecture Levitan befriended Konstantin
Korovin, Mikhail Nesterov, architect Fyodor
Shekhtel, painter Mikhail Chekhov, his famous
brother writer Anton Chekhov who became the
closest friend of the artist for life. Levitan
often visited Chekhov and some think Levitan was
in love with his sister, Maria Pavlovna Chekhova. 


He collaborated with Chekhov brothers in the
illustrated magazine "Moscow" in the beginning of
1880s he illustrated M. Fabritsius edition
"Kremlin". In 1885-1886 together with Korovin he
wrote scenery of performances of the Private
Russian opera of S.I.Mamontov.


In the end of 1880s he visited the "drawing
evening" in the Polenov’s house. The landscape
painter, deeply feeling both lyrical revealing
unique charm and quiet greatness of Russian
nature, Levitan practically did not paint urban
landscapes, with the exception (currently lost)
"View of Simonov monastery", mentioned by
Nesterov, Moscow is present only in the painting
"Illumination of the Kremlin". In the end of 1870s
he worked a lot in vicinities of Moscow, and
created the special variant of "landscape of mood"
in which the shape and a condition of the nature
are spiritualized, become carriers of conditions
of human soul ("Autumn day. Sokolniki", 1879).
During work in Ostankino, he embodied fragments of
mansion’s house and park, but basically he was
fond of poetry chamber places in forest or modest
countryside. 

In the summer of 1890 Levitan went to Yuryevets
(Юрьевец
) and among numerous landscapes and etudes he
wrote "The View of Krivooserski monastery". So the
plan of one of his best pictures "The silent
monastery" was born, where the image of a silent
monastery and planked bridges through the river,
connected it with world around, expressed deep
reflections of the artist about life. It is known
that this picture made strong impression on
Chekhov. 

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


Levitan met the last year of his life (1900) at
Chekhov’s in Crimea. In spite of the painter
being terminally ill, his last works are full of
light. They reflect tranquility and eternal beauty
of Russian nature. 

He was buried in Dorogomilov Jewish cemetery and
in April 1941 was reburied in the Novodevichy
Cemetery, next to Chekhov's necropolis. Levitan
did not have a family or children. 

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

== External links ==
commonscat|Isaak Ilitsch Lewitan

*http://slavyanic.narod.ru/art/painting/levitan/
Levitan painitings virtual gallery