Isaak Levitan's lyrical and poetic paintings of Russia's lakes and rivers, her fields, vast forests and seemingly illimitable steppeland have often been compared to works of Russian literature. They recall, it has been said, Turgenev's Hunter's sketches, with their charming descriptions of the countryside around Oryol, Tolstoy's Anna Karenina, in which the author's engagement with rural life is so apparent, and Chekhov's forlorn, disappearing Cherry Orchard, at whose demise so many theatregoers have felt disconsolate. As the critic Aleksandr Benois wrote in I9O4, Levitan succeeded in conveying 'the ineffable charm of our desolation, the grand sweep of our untrammelled spaces, the mournful celebration of Russian autumn and the enigmatic allure of Russian spring'.

FOREWORD

INTRODUCTION

1 Childhood

2 Serfdom and its effect on Russian life and landscape

3 The Moscow School of Painting

4 Landscape painting in Russia Levitan's River Volga

6 Anton Chekhov

7 Levitan and realism

8 Travels in Europe, 1890-94

9 Major works

10 Cultural scene Moscow and St Petersburg

11 Levitan and nature

12 Secession Munich

13 Secession Vienna

14 Diaghilev and World of Art

15 Last years, 1898-1900

NOTES

BIBLIOGRAPHY

INDEX