Isaac Ilyich Levitan is a brilliant Russian landscape painter, a Jew by nationality. This is who Levitan is.
Early life
In 1860, the second son, Isaac, was born into the family of an educated Jewish tradesman Ilya Levitan. A poor family on the verge of miserable existence lived at that time in Lithuania in the town of Kirbat. Ilya Levitan himself was a translator, then taught languages. In search of a better life, they all moved to Moscow. The existence of the family did not get any better. They settled on the outskirts of the fourth floor in a small apartment. There was no money at all. Children could not even go to school, because there was nothing to pay. Father himself worked with them.
At the age of 13, Isaac entered the Moscow School of Painting and Sculpture. He immediately, without hesitation, decided that he would be a landscape painter. Even their miserable apartment was good because from it for a long time it was possible to admire the setting sun.
When Isaac was fifteen, his mother died. And two years later, having contracted typhoid, his father also died. At the same time, Isaac fell ill with typhus, but he recovered, but the consequences affected his whole life - he was in poor health. How they survived, starving, four young children without financial assistance, only they know. Neither Isaac nor his brother ever told anyone anything about their childhood and adolescence. Perhaps their memories were so bitter and joyless.
At school
At first, Levitan studied with Vasily Perov, but in the fourth grade, Alexei Savrasov invited him to his landscape class . Levitan studied easily, but still he worked hard and hard. Pictures created by him at 16, “Autumn. The road in the village "and" Evening ", are now in the State Tretyakov Gallery. And then the school marked them with a silver medal and financial assistance.
Eviction of Jews from Moscow
In 1879, a decree was issued banning Jews from living in the ancient capital of Russia. Who is Levitan? An outcast who does not have a place where life is in full swing. The brothers settled near Moscow in a summer cottage in Saltykovka. The places there were beautiful. What else does a landscape painter need? Paints and canvas, or maybe just pencil and paper, watercolor, ink, pen. Everything that can serve as educational material for depicting the state of nature, its mood. But Levitan travels to Moscow every day. And not in vain. At the exhibition of 1879, his painting “Autumn Day. Sokolniki. " In it, the female figure was painted by Nikolai Chekhov's brother.
The elegy picture was immediately appreciated and bought by P. M. Tretyakov. Levitan has no “passing” works. He is still studying, but what gamut of colors reigns on the canvas "Oak" permeated by the sun!
The painter is extremely sensitive to subtle changes in nature and knows how to convey them. But neither talent nor skill allowed Levitan to receive the title of artist at the end of the school in 1885. Who is Levitan after college? Calligraphy teacher.
Acquaintance with A. Chekhov
After graduation, Isaac Levitan did not have a diploma or money. He settled near Moscow near Babkino, where the Chekhov family was staying. This is where Anton Pavlovich and Isaac Ilyich meet for the first time. To a sick Levitan, his friend Mikhail Chekhov will lead his brother-doctor. So their acquaintance will take place. The closed and suspicious Levitan will literally blossom, communicating with the friendly and cheerful Chekhov family, where everyone is ready for invention and practical jokes, and Anton Pavlovich himself serves as the ringleader. The joy and smile of life will flow from the canvas "Birch Grove", which Isaac Ilyich Levitan will begin to write here. His biography and Chekhov will often be intertwined. Here he will continue to declare his love for Russian nature, so simple and dim, but sometimes amazingly joyful and major. A. Chekhov for some time began to call the nature of the Moscow Region "Levitan". A little later, A.P. Chekhov will be presented with Isaac Ilyich Levitan photo with a dedication inscription.
Two small paintings, which the painter presented to the writer, also speak of the closeness of the two artists. One is called the Istra River, and the second is Oak and Birch. On it against the background of the forest thicket there passes a narrow path, next to which there is a powerful oak, and a thin white birch gently clings to it. Both landscapes were above the desk of Anton Pavlovich along with a photograph of the artist.
"Birch Grove"
Everything in this fishing line is filled with light. He shimmers, playing on the trunks, making them even brighter and whiter. The sun permeates the foliage, each tree reaches for it and basks under its rays. It is simply amazing how many shades of green the artist found for his work. Only a sophisticated master colorist can work in almost two colors, without causing the viewer the impression of uniformity and poverty of the color palette. On the contrary, it is rich and does not merge into one mass. And the bluish bells in the foreground reinforce the impression of juiciness of young grass filling the lawn.
Crimea in the life of an artist
At this time, in the mid-80s, the artist’s financial situation improved after he worked with Mamontov, but his health deteriorated, and he went to Crimea to amend him. There, at first he was delighted, wrote romantic works, and then, as he admitted in letters to A. Chekhov, he got bored in the North. He came back and exhibited Crimean landscapes (“Tatar cemetery. Crimea”, “Near the sea. Crimea”, “Ai-Petri”, “Crimean landscape”, “In the Crimean mountains”) at the Moscow exhibition. They were all sold out in the very first days. The life led by Isaac Ilyich Levitan, the biography and paintings of the artist are described step by step in the article.
Boat trip
The first trip along the Volga, undertaken in the spring of 1887, was unsuccessful. It was gray, rainy and cold weather. A strong wind blew from the Volga. The frustrated artist is back. But the Volga is not one of those rivers that can be forgotten. The next year he again went to the Volga. Here he found the town of Plyos, whose surroundings became the impetus for creativity for more than one year.
In the “Evening on the Volga” a river of immense breadth slowly and majestically flows. There is no end in it, no edge. On the other side, even the forest is clearly not visible. He stands on the opposite hilly shore with a bluish strip in the thickening twilight and melts away, turning into a thin strip. The Volga is calm. Evening clouds are reflected in its water. Only the sunset sun, which is located behind the painter’s backlight, shines high and high with golden reflections.
"After the rain. Ples ”, 1889
The river is also immense. But everything on it is washed by the past rain and glows with a special silver light. This purity and ripples on the river remind of the rain, which brought renewal to nature. People are present indirectly. Communication with them occurs through the city landscape in the distance, and boats, and barges on the shore. The depicted world is poetic and spiritual. So who is Levitan? He is a poet who picked up a brush and not with words, but with paints and drawings, speaks of harmony, which is sometimes possible.
Travel to Western Europe
In 1889-1890 Levitan goes to get acquainted with modern painting in France and Italy. Besides the fact that he saw the works of artists of the Barbizon school and the Impressionists, Levitan himself painted many landscapes. However, towards the end of the journey he was already irresistibly drawn home to all his relatives that he knew and felt with all his heart.
The period of the peak of the creation of spiritual values
The nineties - the heyday of Levitan. Yes, and the artist himself. He was always handsome, and now he has become an elegant fashionable man who, in addition, attracted people with his sensitivity and delicacy. According to Chaliapin, "a rare poetic soul" shone in his eyes.
In 1890, Levitan wrote The Quiet Convent, which combined together the artist’s impressions of the monasteries of Ples and the Moscow Region, seen by the Russian people more than once, and which, according to Chekhov, caused him to go farther and farther into the sunset into the ocean of pure bliss. Levitan, like no one else, revealed the secret of Russian nature, its quiet beauty.
Personal troubles
Not one Levitan went to the Volga. Among others, he was accompanied by the artist S. Kuvshinnikova. This lady was carried away by the amorous and passionate Isaac Ilyich Levitan. His biography was replenished with an affair with an ugly, but elegant and smart lady who was 12 years older than him. They began to talk about them. After all, Kuvshinnikova was married to a doctor. A.P. Chekhov wrote the story “The Jumper”, in which everyone saw this couple. But Levitan was offended and broke off relations with A. Chekhov. They were reconciled by T. L. Shchepkina-Kupernik. But on the part of Levitan, this was a formal reconciliation, because he was so offended that he wanted a duel. So suspicious was Isaac Ilyich Levitan. Interesting facts of his life are also associated with Chekhov. The most charming Levitan became an entrance to the house of Senator Turchaninov. He became interested in his wife, and the senator's daughter fell in love with Levitan. At this time, as never before, Levitan painted still lifes with flowers. Then he painted in one of the visits the picture "March", depicting the Turchaninovs estate. This is a bright end to winter that no one has ever seen before.
It has white snow, a dazzling blue sky, blue shadows in the snow. After Levitan, this motive began to be repeated frequently in the paintings of Yuon and Grabar. We will return to the Turchaninovs house. A young girl completely interfered in this novel, and this unsettles Levitan, and the artist even shoots. Chekhov felt a certain theatricality in this, since the wound was not life-threatening. Moreover, at that moment Levitan killed a seagull, which he brought into the house and threw it at the feet of women. It was a tragic incident in which Isaac Ilyich Levitan fell. The facts from the artist’s life became a creative impulse for A.P. Chekhov and were reflected in the play “The Seagull”.
"At the pool" (1892)
At this time, Levitan experienced his unsuccessful novels with Kuvshinnikova and Turchaninova and projected his inner experiences onto nature. Anxiety is the main motive of this work, which also covers the viewer. In these same places, Pushkin wrote his “Mermaid”.
Vladimirka (1892)
The endless road of convicts to Siberia. In any weather, people went to hard labor in shackles in the vast expanses of both under the scorching sun and in the pouring cold autumn rains. This desert tract excited Levitan so much that in several sessions he painted in one breath and presented it to Pavel Tretyakov.
"Above Eternal Peace" (1894)
Cape, dilapidated chapel, cemetery. The wind bends thin trees, and it seems that a little more and it will demolish both the churchyard and the church. The expanse of the lake is vast under the sky with overhanging lead clouds.
Nature indifferent to man is eternal. It makes sad sadness and thoughts about the eternal - about the loneliness of man, about his smallness in grandiose open spaces. Man feels like a grain of sand in the universe. The composition of the picture is strict and clear. Two thirds of the canvas is occupied by the sky. Only the dome of the chapel directed into the sky resists the power of the elements. Faith and faith alone will help a person survive.
"Spring. Big water "(1897)
The last years of the painter is his huge take-off. There is no way to describe everything that Isaac Ilyich Levitan created at that time, whose work is extremely diverse. The lyrics and bright poetry are his work “Spring. Big water. "
Since childhood, spring has been his favorite time of the year. And now, a wise man sings a hymn to resurrected beauty with pale blue sky, azure water, thin light trunks of trees. Here, in this enchanted land, silence and peace reign, in which everyone dissolves, who happens to look at the canvas. So who is Levitan?
An artist-philosopher, a lyric artist who was best able to express the charm of the discreet Russian nature and its quiet charm.
Heart disease cut short the creator's life when he was thirty-nine years old. He died in 1900. Isaac Ilyich Levitan passed away too soon. We tried to analyze creativity, all the most outstanding paintings, without missing the main thing - his ability to fill his works with the breath of life. Now his ashes are in the Novodevichy cemetery in Moscow.