Rafail Sergeevich Levitsky

Rafail Levitsky
Portrait by Ilya Repin (1878) Finnish National Gallery, Ateneum Art Gallery, Helsinki, Finland
Born	Rafail Sergeevich Levitsky 1847 St. Petersburg, Russian Empire
Died	1940 Leningrad, Soviet Union
Nationality	Russian Empire
Education	Imperial Academy of Arts, Saint Petersburg
Known for	painter, photographer
Movement	Peredvizhniki, Realism, Romantic, Genre, Impressionism
Patron(s)	Alexander II of Russia, Alexander III of Russia, Nicholas II of Russia, Napoleon III

Rafail Sergeevich Levitsky (or Rafael Sergeevich Levitsky, or Raphael Sergeevich Levitsky; Russian: Рафаи́л Сергее́вич Леви́цкий; 1847–1940) was a Russian genre, romantic, and impressionist artist who was an active participant in the Peredvizhniki (Itinerant) Movement.

His letters to his artist friend Vasily Dmitrievich Polenov 1844-1927 are a personal account of many of the key figures in Russian art who exhibited during their lifetime.

Rafail was born into a wealthy aristocratic family. He was married to Anna Vasilevna Olsufevsky. He was the second cousin of Aleksandr Ivanovich Herzen (1812–1870), the writer and outstanding public figure; and son to Count Sergei Lvovich Levitsky (1819–1898), one of the founders of photography in Russia and Europe's early photographic pioneers.

He was friend to author Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy (1828–1910) who visited and stayed with him and his wife on several occasions.

Rafail Levitsky was also an art professor and an acclaimed photographer, most noted for his portraits of the ill-fated family of Czar Nicholas II, the last emperor of Russia.

In 1866, Rafail Sergeevich Levitsky began his artistic studies at the Imperial Academy of Arts in Saint Petersburg as a free-student.

While there, Rafail studied directly under the teaching of Pavel Petrovich Chistyakov (1832–1919) along with classmates that included V.D. Polenov, and I.E. Repin.

It is Chistyakov's teaching methods that combined the best traditions of the academic school and the experience of direct perception of nature that are widely recognized as having led to the development of realism in Russian art.

Rafail received medals in 1867 - 2 silver and in 1872 - a minor and two major honours.

In 1877 he received a rank of "class artist of third stage".

Rafail Sergeevich Levitsky was a Professor of Drawing and Painting on Porcelain at the School of Imperial Society of Honouring Visual Arts from 1884 until the school was closed by the Soviets in 1918.

His career is documented in a report written by request of the Committee of Imperial Society of Honouring Visual Arts by Nickolay Makarenko, published in Saint Petersburg in 1914.