Isaac Ilyich Levitan -the poet of the landscape.

Isaac Ilyich Levitan is known as “the poet of the landscape”. He continued and developed the traditions of his predecessors, painters of the Russian realist school.

Levitan studied at the Moscow school of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture. After a year in the copying class Isaac transferred into naturalistic class and soon into a landscape class. Levitan’s teachers were Savrasov, Perov, Polenov. For his successes at school Levitan was awarded a box of paints and two dozen brushes.

Isaac Levitan’s works were first exhibited in 1877 and earned favourable recognition from the press. 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 at the Moscow school of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture Levitan befriended Korovin, M.Nesterov, F. Shekhtel and the painter N. Chekhov whose famous brother Anton Chekhov became the artist’ s closest friend. Levitan often visited Chekhov and some thing Levitan was in love with his sister , Maria Chekhova.

A master of landscape, Levitan did not introduce figures into it, but each picture was permeated with some deep human feeling.

His best canvas are Autumn Day in Sokolniki; Evening. Golden Plyoss; After Rain; Eternal Peace; Springtime, the Last of the Snow; Deep "Waters; Vladimirka and his famous Golden Autumn.

Golden Autumn was painted in 1895 and 1896. One can see a sunny day of the so-called "Indian summer". The bright autumn sun makes the fallen leaves golden. In the foreground there are some young birches growing on the bank of the river. Their leaves have become golden, red and light-brown. How wonderful they are! The earth is covered with a soft carpet of fading leaves of different colours. Dark-violet clouds are sailing across the light-blue sky.

On the right bank of the river there is a group of trees, covered with leaves which are still green. But we feel that soon the leaves will turn yellow and fall off. The landscape is of some decorative quality and at the same time it remains realistic.

Levitan could embody deep-lying social ideas in landscape, as for example in his Viadimirka, the highway along which political prisoners were driven into exile in tsarist Russia. In his painting of the deserted road stretching away into endless grey, dreary distances, he showed the terrible suffering that had fallen upon the best representatives of the people.

Levitan painted his last picture The Lake in 1899—1900. It expresses his love to his country, the greatness of the landscape, its might and strength.

Levitan's creative work added one of the most splendid chapters to the history of Russian painting. His palette was generally muted and his tendencies were more naturalistic and poetic than optical or scientific.

In 1897 Levitan 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 spent the last years of his life at Chekhov’s house in Crimea. In spite of the effects of a terminal illness his last years were filled with light. They reflect the tranquility and the eternal beauty of the Nature.

Levitan’s heritage consists of more than a thousand paintings, among them watercolours, pastels, graphics and illustrations.