Most of Levitan’s drawings are sketched in relation to his future canvases – such drawings include, for example, The Silent Convent, 1890s. However, he has a lot of independent drawings – many of them give out a born painter in the author; this is indicated even by the fact that Levitan loved to frame them.
The artist’s drawings are his creative lab; they reflect Levitan’s compositional quest, changes in angle and lighting, the evolution of the system of images. They are distinguished by the stunning accuracy of the line – this is not the photographic accuracy of the same Shishkin, but the accuracy of gaze, cordial response, sensation, mood.
Very interesting: Levitan’s graphic line is often unusually similar to a brush stroke – such as, for example, in Edge of the Forest, 1891. As in the paintings, the artist does not pursue the unusual in the drawings, but rather poeticizes the ordinary – according to his own formula: “You see the cart – draw the cart, but try to convey what you feel, the mood…”
