 | Isaac Ilyich LEVITAN 1860 — 1900Ісаак ЛЄВІТАН • Исаак Ильич ЛЕВИТАНIsaac Ilyich Levitan is a classical Russian landscape painter who advanced the genre of the mood landscape. He was born in 1960 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 in addition was self-educated. In the beginning of 1870 the Levitan family moved to Moscow. In 1873 Levitan entered the Moscow School of painting, sculpturing and architecture where his older brother Avel already studied for two years. Levitan`s teachers were the famous Savrasov, V.G. Perov and V.D. Polenov. In 1877, Isaac Levitan`s works were first publicly exhibited and were positively recognized by the press. In 1880 his painting Осенний день. Сокольники (Autumn day. Sokolniki) was bought by famous philanthropist and art collector Pavel Mikhailovich Tretyakov. In the spring 1884, Levitan participated in the mobile art exhibition by the group known as the Peredvizhniki and since 1891 became a member of the Peredvizhniki partnership. 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. Levitan did not have a family or children. |
