In the early period of creativity, Isaac Ilyich Levitan was influenced by his teachers Alexei Savrasov and Vasily Polenov. Over time, the artist came to the conclusion that the full-scale etude, which seemed to be the basis of the painting, was only the initial stage on the way to identifying the figurative content of the conceived work.
Levitan extremely developed the emotional expressiveness of the landscape, showed the subtle nuances of the life of nature. The feelings conveyed by the artist are peculiar to all people, and therefore understandable to everyone. The artist is objective, he does not subordinate nature to his experiences, and, moreover, does not distort it to please them.
Nature is “human,” emotional in both the late and early works of the artist. Only the content of emotions changed, and the way they were expressed. The moods underlying the Levitan landscapes are not only objective, but also deeply informative. The disclosure of the “innermost secret” in nature, its great spiritual content was the constant striving of Levitan throughout his short creative life. Comprehension was not easy for the artist.
Suffice it to recall one of Levitan’s letters sent from the Volga to AP Chekhov in 1887: “Could it be more tragic how to feel the infinite beauty of the surrounding world, notice the hidden secret, see God in everything and not be able to realize these great sensations. ” In a circle of close people, Isaac Levitan often liked to repeat the lines from Yevgeny Boratynsky’s poem To Goethe’s Death. They thought of him the true “ideal of landscape painter”:
(1 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)