Isaac Levitan Enter a
feeling, not
a gallery.
Choose a mood and the room itself answers — the light cools or warms, the air changes pace, and only the works that carry that feeling step forward from the dark. Everything else recedes into shadow.
Isaac Levitan
Early Life, Family and Training Isaak Ilyich Levitan was born on August 30, 1860, in a shtetl called Kibarty, located in the Augustów Governorate of Congress Poland, which was then part of the Russian Empire. He grew up in a family that was poor in means but held a deep respect for education. His father, Elyashiv Levitan, had been the son of a rabbi and had completed his studies at a Yeshiva. This background provided a foundation of lit
eracy and thought even as the family faced the daily struggles of their economic reality. In 1873, the young artist entered the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture. His early years there were spent in a copying class, where he learned the fundamentals of form and imitation. After a year of this disciplined study, he transferred into a naturalistic class to begin developing his own way of seeing the world. During this…