Isaak leviton biography for kids

The colors, though muted, are warm, and divided into a subtle spectrum: first, the bright hues of the grass and the path, then the golden yellow of the small and younger trees, behind them the higher trees, with their brown-green leaves, and finally, the blue of the sky. In the foreground, the lady in black captures the eye. In a sense she is the subject of the painting, yet Levitan only added her later on, on the suggestion of his friend Nikolai Chekhov, who could not conceive of a work without human figures.

Throughout the preparatory process of plein air sketching, Levitan focused on only the landscape, completing a number of drafts before finishing the canvas in the studio. In this sense, the landscape itself is the subject of the work. The viewer is struck first by the naturalism of the scene, still revolutionary at the time, and by the scale of the trees stretching upwards to the sky.

The subtle formal arrangement might also seem to symbolize the passage of time, with the eye drawn upwards from the younger trees to the higher, darker trees, touching the white eternity. A strong emotion of sorrow is conveyed through the desolation of the setting, which would have been enhanced by the empty bench had the woman not been added. Still doubtful and insecure in his talent, perhaps, Levitan conceded to his friend, adding a romantic detail and a more anecdotal touch to the work.

Isaak leviton biography for kids

Sokolniki is a park outside of Moscow where Levitan had settled for a time with his sister, having been expelled from Moscow as a Jew following the failed assassination attempt of Tsar Alexander II by a Jewish revolutionary. Dejected and lonely, we can imagine Levitan's feelings as he walked among the trees making sketches for this painting.

The work was exhibited at a Moscow School exhibition, where it is said to have angered Levitan's mentor Savrasov, who found the woman "unnecessary". Nevertheless, the collector Tretyakov purchased the work and started to follow Levitan's career. This painting depicts a forest of birch trees on a sunny day. Small touches of bright yellow contrast with specks of dark green, heightening the luminosity of the canvas.

The white of the trunks stands out, punctuating the landscape with vertical lines. Purple dots sprinkle the grass. Opting for an eye-level perspective, Levitan only includes a portion of the forest canopy, cutting off the treetops and much of the foliage, while suggesting their presence by depicting the light passing through to mottle the meadow beneath.

The human's eye view invites us into the painting, as if we were experiencing the sensory pleasures of the birch grove firsthand. It took Levitan about four years to finish this small canvas. But despite the years of thought and corrections poured into the final outcome, the painting radiates with freshness and a sense of immediacy.

We can sense the influence of Impressionist techniques on the work, in particular Levitan's admiration for Camille Corot. Like Corot, Levitan captured the delicate beauty of light passing through foliage using small, quivering brushstrokes and precise gradations of colors. But the subject-matter, while comparable to the sylvan scenes of the Barbizon School or Impressionist milieux, is subtly nationalistic.

The birch tree is often taken as a symbol of the beauty of the Russian countryside, and the artist made a conscious choice in selecting it. Levitan's birch grove captured nature in its brilliant, sensory and emotional appeal, and inspired future artists. Gustav Klimt may have had this work in mind when composing his early landscapes, which seem to share compositional traits and motifs with Levitan's work.

The work is also significant in suggesting the youthful joy of the artist; Levitan started to work on it at a positive point in his career, before the tribulations of his final decade. This painting represents the Vladimirka or Vladimir Road leading east out of Moscow to the city of Vladimir. It was by chance that Levitan first discovered the road while out hunting with his mistress Sofia.

Taken by the starkness of the scene, he decided to depict it. He painted it as he first saw it: empty and desolate, on a cloudy day. The composition is quite simple, with the horizon line dividing the canvas and crossing in its center the vertical line of the road. The latter is flanked by beaten footpaths on each side. The meandering of footprints is somewhat reflected in the light swirling movement of the clouds above, but this is a dreary landscape overall.

The female character waiting in the middle distance recalls a sense of human presence, but underlines at the same time the vast stillness and loneliness of the place. The subject was an emotive one for artists and free thinkers of Levitan's generation. The Vladimir Road was a historically charged location, used since the middle of the eighteenth century for transporting convicts from Moscow to Siberia, where they would be put to hard labor.

In Russian artistic vocabulary, the road is associated with misery, imprisonment, and death. By choosing to depict it, Levitan immortalized the thousands of wretched outcasts who had marched along the Vladimir Road towards exile. He may have identified with them as someone who had himself been a beggar, forced to live on the fringes of society, and also as a man discriminated against and twice banned from Moscow for being Jewish.

Through the emptiness of the scene, and through the road that seems to open out to infinity, the artist conveys a strong feeling of despair which is at the same time an expression of compassion. Despite tapping into these elemental human emotions, the work is unusual in its rootedness in historical reference. Perhaps for this reason, Levitan ended up losing interest in it, and gave it for free to Tretyakov.

This work is one of Levitan's most famous. It shows from a bird's eye view a church on a hill, overlooking the bank of a vast lake. There is a graveyard next to the church and a small island in the middle of the water. The lake is immense, still and peaceful, evenly painted in bright white, contrasting with the fresh green of the grass on the hill.

The horizon line divides the canvas into two equal spaces, separating the air above from the isaak leviton biography for kids and the water below, but it is the huge sky that dominates. It is rendered in three different colors: a yellow-white for the dying light of the sun, purplish for the clouds that hint at the encroaching evening, and darker colors suggesting an approaching storm.

It is a mighty, beautiful, imposing sky. Although the landscape depicted is that of Crimea, the church on the hill is from Plyos, in the Volga region. Levitan had sketched it previously and reproduced it here to enhance the mood of the work. In a letter to Chekhov from Crimea inLevitan wrote: "Last evening I climbed up a cliff and looked down at the sea from the top - I started to sob, and sobbed violently; that was eternal beauty, that was where a human being felt his own utter insignificance!

Elevated above a comfortable viewing position, we face nature and the elements alone. The sky is, in the truest sense, sublime, almost threatening in its immensity, yet simultaneously soothing in its beauty, filling the viewer with an overwhelming wave of emotion. One is led to contemplate the power of nature and what may lie beyond it. The graveyard on earth symbolizes the impermanence of life and the powerlessness of human beings set against the immutable force of nature.

We might note that the sky is not reflected in the water, as if to suggest the imperviousness of the heavens to the scene below. While working on this painting, the artist would often ask his lover Sofia Petrovna to play the piano, especially a "March Funebre" from Beethoven's Heroic Symphonyupon which tears would come to his eyes. Levitan, not a Realist painter, permeated this work with his emotion, imbuing it with highly philosophical and lyrical qualities.

Writing to Tretyakov, who purchased it, Levitan declared: "I am all in it, with all my mind". Some historians have also seen in this painting a nationalist paean to the beauty of the Russian wilderness. This painting is one of the few works which Levitan dedicated to European landscapes across his career. Created while he was undergoing medical treatment in Courmayeur, a resort in Italy, the scene depicted is divided into three areas of terrain: the mountains in the background, the green valleys in the middle, and the flat plains in the foreground.

A different color predominates in each section: bright white for the snowy peaks, dark green for the trees and grass on the slopes, and lighter green for the grass. In the very center of the canvas, at the bottom of the valley, a small hamlet stands out against the immensity, a cloud of smoke rising from it. His friends' pleadings enabled him to return by December of that year.

Inalready world-famous, he was elected to the Imperial Academy of Arts and in he 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 he suffered from a heart condition for much of his lifehis last works are increasingly filled with light.

They reflect tranquility and the eternal beauty of Russian nature. He was buried in Dorogomilovo Jewish cemetery. In April Levitan's remains were moved to 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 paintings, among them watercolorspastelsgraphicsand illustrations.

During the year after his death an exhibit of several hundred Levitan paintings was shown in Moscow and then in St. His works appeared on the covers of Russian language textbooks and school children learned of his love for his native land. A minor planet Levitan, discovered by Soviet astronomer Lyudmila Zhuravlyova in is named after him.

Isaac Levitan facts for kids Kids Encyclopedia Facts. Quick facts for kids. MoscowRussian Empire. All content from Kiddle encyclopedia articles including the article images and facts can be freely used under Attribution-ShareAlike license, unless stated otherwise. Cite this article:. This page was last modified on 3 Novemberat Suggest an edit.

Thankfully the efforts of his friends and supporters granted him a return to Moscow within a year, but for Levitan his love for his motherland and the rejection he faced went hand in hand throughout his life. Isaac left the School innever obtaining a proper diploma. There are several versions as to why that happened - the artist either outgrew the School and stopped attending classes which resulted in an expulsion, or it had something to do with the fact that a Jewish boy, according to some influential opinions, had no right to become a representative of the Russian nature.

One way or another, the uneasy fate of the artist left an imprint on his health and mental state. He spent most of in the company of A. Chekhov, a friendship with whom lasted until Levitan's last days. Around this time the painter developed a isaak leviton biography for kids condition, which drastically improved after his wellness trip to Crimea in Almost immediately upon his return Isaac Ilyich organised a major solo exhibition of his own work and spent the following years exploring Russia.

In he was traveling along the Volga and Oka rivers, stopping in the town of Plyos, which Levitan found so strangely captivating that he subsequently spent three years depicting its nature and even obtained himself a studio in Plyos. The town was pictured on the artist's canvases Evening. Golden PlyosAfter the rain. Plyos and many others.

Archived from the original on 11 February Aurora Art Publishers, Retrieved 9 March Archived from the original on 11 June Retrieved 13 October Quiet Abode. The description of a picture. Russian Artists". Russian Life. The Works by A. Chekhov in 12 volumes. Khudozhestvennaya Literatura. Moscow, Anton Chekhov: A Life. Northwestern University Press.

ProQuest Dictionary of Minor Planet Names 5th ed. New York: Springer Verlag. Sources [ edit ]. External links [ edit ]. Wikiquote has quotations related to Isaac Levitan. Wikimedia Commons has media related to Isaac Levitan. Isaac Levitan. Volga Golden Autumn March Lake Peredvizhniki artistic group Levitan. Authority control databases. Trove Deutsche Biographie.

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Toggle the table of contents. Portrait by Alexander Shurygin Isaac Ilyich Levitan 30 August [ O. Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture. RealismPeredvizhnikiImpressionism. Member Academy of Arts