Isaac Levitan

Isaac Levitan was a classical Russian landscape painter who advanced the genre of the "mood landscape". His extremely influential art heritage consists of more than a 1000 paintings, pastels, graphics, and illustrations. Levitan's paintings were a deep response to the lyrical magic of the Russian landscape. He did not paint city landscapes; with few exceptions. During the late 1870s Levitan created the special option of the "landscape of mood", in which the shape and condition of nature are spiritualized, and become carriers of conditions of the human soul. Characteristic of his work is a hushed and nearly melancholic reverie amidst pastoral landscapes largely devoid of human presence. Though his late work displayed familiarity with Impressionism, his palette was generally muted, and his tendencies were more naturalistic and poetic than optical or scientific.