Isaac Ilyich Levitan, Evening Bells-1892
Oil on Canvas
I have recently been looking at some Russian painters from the late 19th and early 20th century. Issak Levitan is one of them. I first discovered him through Marc Dalessio's blog.www.marcdalessio.com
Marc also happens to be one amazing painter as well, check out his work.
This landscape by Levitan is one hell of a landscape painting. For students of landscape painting this work has a lot great things to study. How he massed the middle ground trees to how the painting is pitched. Check out how he uses different brush strokes to create the illusion of the grasses and bushes and the simplicity of the river bank lead up to the horizon. Not to mention the reflections on the water.
The work of Isaac Ilyich Levitan belongs to the highest achievements of Russian culture. Its significance is compared with the works of such classics as Anton Chekhov, Pyotr Tchaikovsky and Konstantin Stanislavsky.
Levitan was born in 1860 into a poor but educated Jewish family. In the late 1860s, the family moved to Moscow, where Isaac studied at the Moscow School of Painting and Sculpture from 1873 till 1883. He lost his mother in 1875 and his father two years later. He was left penniless and homeless in Moscow, sleeping alternately in the homes of relatives and friends, sometimes spending the night in the empty classrooms of the school. A nightwatch took pity on the youth and let him sleep in his cubicle. The School waived his tuition fee “because of extreme poverty and in recognition of his singular success in art”.
For more of Isaac Ilyich Levitan work check out Olga's Gallery
