Isaac Levitan

Isaac Levitan
Issac Levitan, Self portrait, 1880
Born	Isaac Ilyich Levitan 30 August [O.S. 18 August] 1860 Kibarty, Augustów Governorate, Congress Poland, Russian Empire
Died	4 August [O.S. 22 July] 1900 (aged 39) Moscow
Nationality	Russian
Education	Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture
Known for	Painting
Notable work	Autumn day. Sokolniki (1879) Over Eternal Peace (1894)
Movement	Realism, Peredvizhniki, Impressionism
Awards	Silver Medal (1877)
Patron(s)	Pavel Tretyakov, Savva Mamontov

Isaac Ilyich Levitan (Russian: Исаа́к Ильи́ч Левита́н; 30 August [O.S. 18 August] 1860 – 4 August [O.S. 22 July] 1900) was a classical Russian landscape painter who advanced the genre of the "mood landscape."

Isaac Levitan was born in a shtetl of Kibarty, Augustów Governorate in Congress Poland, a part of the Russian Empire (present-day Lithuania) into a poor but educated Jewish family. His father Elyashiv Levitan was the son of a rabbi, completed a Yeshiva and was self-educated. He taught German and French in Kowno and later worked as a translator at a railway bridge construction for a French building company. At the beginning of 1870 the Levitan family moved to Moscow.

In September 1873, Isaac Levitan entered the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture where his older brother Avel had already studied for two years. After a year in the copying class Isaac transferred into a naturalistic class, and soon thereafter into a landscape class. Levitan's teachers were the famous Alexei Savrasov, Vasily Perov and Vasily Polenov.

In 1875, his mother died, and his father fell seriously ill and became unable to support four children; he died in 1877. The family slipped into abject poverty. As patronage for Levitan's talent and achievements, his Jewish origins and to keep him in the school, he was given a scholarship.