Bare Trees: Issac Levitan

For the subject of bare trees, artist Douglas Ferrin has suggested we look the work of Russian landscape painter Isaac Levitan (1860-1900). Doug says:

I think Levitan is my favorite Russian painter - he's the only one I know of who captured in a fresh, Monet-like way the intense color and loneliness of the Russian landscape. Even Llya Repin, who I like quite a lot, always seemed to have an agenda aside from painting what was in front of him (although he did that rather well). Repin wanted to be the "Tolstoy of painting"; Levitan, it seems to me, merely wanted to respond to what he saw and capture the mood the land he seemed to love so much. Turgenev is a good literary parallel - even when he talks about what's going on politically, he seems to be more concerned with his characters - not about the politics, per se, but how his characters respond to the politics, whatever they may be. To me, Levitan was concerned of capturing the "Spirit of the black earth", as Turgenev was fond of calling the spirit of Russia.

Autumn Landscape 1880

Spring Flood 1897

March 1895

Boulevard in the Evening 1893

 Winter Landscape, Hunters in the Snow watercolor 1876

Trunks of the trees charcoal 1895 

I want to discover and locate in my own country the most simple, the most intimate, the most commonplace and the most emotionally moving, that which often causes a sense of melancholia- Issac Levitan