Class hour “Levitan singer of Russian nature. Singer of Russian nature - abstract Trip to the Volga and abroad

Isaac Levitan is the greatest Russian landscape painter of the 19th century, who suffered from his nationality throughout his life. However, he was not offended by anti-Semites and praised the beauty of Russian nature, which he considered native. Having left all his eminent teachers far behind, he was unable to overcome his nature, prone to melancholy and melancholy. The long-term friendship that connected him with the Chekhov family was later reflected in the works of Anton Pavlovich. Perhaps the reader did not even think that the pages of his works reflect the fate of the great artist, who became the singer of the Russian landscape.

Levitan was born into a poor Jewish family in the village of Kibarty, which is now located in Lithuania. My father worked all his life railway, my grandfather was a respected rabbi in the local Jewish community. But still the family needed money. Therefore, in 1870, little Isaac moved to Moscow with his large family.
His older brother was already engaged in painting and often took his younger brother with him to lectures famous artists, together they visited exhibitions. The boy could spend hours watching his brother work. At the age of 13, he himself was able to demonstrate his talent, and was immediately enrolled in the School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture, where the great Savrasov and Polenov taught at that time.
Unfortunately, his parents passed away early, and Isaac was left an orphan in the middle of inhospitable Moscow streets. Two sisters lived with friends. The brother wandered among friends, and the young genius whiled away the cold nights in the classrooms of his native school, hiding from the local watchman nicknamed “Evil Spirit.” Sometimes his relatives fed him. His comrades, the Korovin brothers and Nikolai Chekhov, Anton Pavlovich’s brother, provided him with enormous support at that time.
In 1979, after the assassination attempt on Alexander II, a decree was issued that prohibited all Jews from living in Russian capitals. Raids began, the police committed atrocities and spared no one. Levitan was only 18 years old, he was poor and angry at society. He did not have a beloved, and his whole life then seemed like one black spot. He plunged into the abyss of black melancholy, which was fueled by dissatisfaction with his own canvases. At such moments he ran away from people.
Even years later, he was overcome by long periods of blues. At such moments, he would go somewhere to the village, take a gun with him and retire into the forest. After communicating with nature, dear to his heart, he returned back in order to create new paintings. He was not at all inspired by overseas beauties, although he still went abroad. Visited Italy, France, Switzerland and Finland.
Finland instantly returned him to a state of melancholy. He did not at all like the view of the black waters of the Gulf of Finland and the harsh, snow-covered forests. For him there was no nature there. The Swiss Alps impressed him. However, he considered them cardboard and too staged to be worth watching. In Venice, he first appreciated the charm of a foreign country. There he liked the air, the splash of water and the romantic charm of the canals at sunset.
In Paris he was introduced to the work of Monet. But Levitan was rather absentminded and dismissive of the Impressionist canvases, although on the eve of his death he was still forced to admit that he himself was to a certain extent their supporter.
Returning to his homeland, he again went into the forest in order to enjoy what was dear to his heart - Russian nature. Soon the Chekhovs invited him to their estate. Maxim Pavlovich later recalled in his letters: “Three miles away from us, on the other side of the river, on the big Klin road, there was the village of Maksimovka. The potter Vasily lived in it, a bitter drunkard who drank literally everything he had, and there was never a time when his wife, Pelageya, was not pregnant. The artist Levitan, who came to sketch, settled with this potter.”

There Levitan wrote his best works. In Maksimovka he was recognized as an eccentric. One day he greatly offended the local peasants with swear words. But he soon regretted what he had done. Then he asked all the village residents to come to his yard. When people came to Levitan’s house, he came out to them and, kneeling down, began to ask for forgiveness. He was considered strange, but no one held a grudge against him.
Levitan never married and had no children. But there was a love story that ended in tears, but was immortalized in Chekhov’s story “The Jumper.” Isaac met Sofya Kuvshinnikova in the Chekhovs' house, with whom Levitan had a difficult relationship. As a result, the artist almost shot himself. At the last moment his friends saved him.
Then Mikhail Chekhov provided enormous support to his friend. He told his brother about what was happening to his friend at that time: “I don’t know what happened there, but upon returning from there he told me that he was met by Levitan with a black bandage on his head, which he immediately explained with the ladies tore it off and threw it on the floor. Then Levitan took the gun and went out to the lake. He returned to his lady with a poor seagull that he had killed for nothing, which he threw at her feet.” Perhaps it was precisely these motives that were reflected in the legendary “The Seagull”.
At the end of his life, Levitan taught at his native school. There he created his own workshop, which resembled a corner of a Russian forest. Ferns were planted in the tubs, small spruce trees grew there, and moss and turf covered the floor. The light fell on the plants as if it were a forest clearing. There were always a lot of fresh flowers in the workshop. Levitan told his students that flowers should be painted in such a way that they smell of flowers, and not of paint.
At the end of the century, Levitan, on the orders of a doctor, goes to Yalta, where Chekhov lives. But the friends changed, grew old and found it difficult to find a common language. In addition, Levitan was tormented by attacks of angina pectoris, which he could not relieve. Ultimately, he returned to Moscow. Where he died in his home in July 1900. He left behind more than 1,000 paintings and sketches, most of which are in major Russian museums.

On August 30, 1860, 150 years ago, Isaac Ilyich Levitan, a Russian landscape painter and wanderer, was born.

Working at a time when Russian artists began to experience the influence of modern French impressionism, the artist I.I. Levitan valued more the traditions of the Wanderers.

A student of A.K. Savrasov, he had a wonderful gift of poetically conveying the beauty of Russian nature. It was important for him to create an inspired landscape, to convey the very life of nature. I.I. Levitan also demanded this truth in creation from life from his students when he was a teacher in the landscape class at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture.

Such amazing simplicity and clarity of motive in his paintings, which I.I. Levitan achieved at the end of his life, seems to have never been achieved by any other artist before him.

He deeply loved art and was extremely devoted to it. “I don’t understand myself outside of painting,” he wrote to A.P. Chekhov.

Anton Pavlovich once said to a writer he knew:
- Oh, if I had the money, I would buy his “Village” from Levitan, drab, pitiful, lost, ugly, but it emanates such inexpressible charm that you can’t tear yourself away: you’d just keep looking at it and looking at it.

Levitan and Chekhov were friends. Fate brought them together in 1885, when they ended up in the picturesque Babkino estate of the Kiselyovs near Moscow, where the Chekhov family rented an outbuilding that summer.

“And what wonderful poetic evenings we spent in the park near the Kiselyovs’ big house! - Chekhov’s sister Maria Pavlovna recalled many years later. - Imagine a warm summer evening, a beautiful estate standing on a steep bank, a river below, a huge forest beyond the river... the silence of the night... The sounds of Beethoven's sonatas and Chopin's nocturnes flow from the house through the open windows and doors. Kiselyovs, we as a family, Levitan sit and listen great game on the piano by Elizaveta Alexandrovna Efremova. - How good! - says Levitan."

He lived not far from Babkin, in the village of Maksimovka. He settled there in April 1885. In those years, after the attempt on the life of the Tsar by the Narodnaya Volya member Solovyov, people of other faiths were evicted from Moscow. Levitan left the Moscow School of Painting without a diploma. There was no money. He settled in a remote village. That spring I couldn’t find a place for myself. I didn’t even know that the Chekhovs were nearby.

The owner of the estate, Maria Vladimirovna Kiseleva, was a healer, and peasants from neighboring villages came to her for help. Anton Chekhov began to help her. One day, Pelageya, the wife of a drunken potter, came to them from Maksimovka and complained of illness. We got to talking, and she said that a strange artist from Moscow was living with them. The biryuk walks around with the biryuk, and at any moment he will decide for himself, and then answer them. And his name, God forgive me, is wonderful - Tesak Ilyich.

For a long time the Chekhovs wondered who it could be, until they realized that Tesak Ilyich was, perhaps, Isaac Ilyich Levitan, a friend of Nikolai Pavlovich Chekhov at the school of painting and sculpture. Let's go to Maksimovka. They found Levitan and lured him to Babkino. Not long before, Tretyakov bought the painting “Autumn Day” from the young artist. Sokolniki”, and Nikolai Chekhov painted the figure of a woman on it.

We worked a lot at Babkino. Levitan went to sketches in the morning, and Chekhov wrote stories while his family slept. One story a day. They were all young, according to the master’s imagination.

“But I return to Babkin,” recalled Mikhail Pavlovich Chekhov. - Thanks to the cheerfulness of the lovely inhabitants, we all, including brother Anton, were very cheerful. He wrote, critics praised him, although Skabichevsky predicted to him that he would get drunk and die somewhere under a fence, but he believed in his talent and was still healthy. Sometimes Anton made a fool. It used to be that on summer evenings he and Levitan would put on Bukhara robes, smear his face with soot and, wearing a turban, go out into the field on the other side of the river with a gun. Levitan rode there on a donkey, climbed down to the ground, spread out a carpet and, like a Muslim, began to pray to the east. Suddenly, from behind the bushes, a Bedouin Anton sneaked up on him and fired blank charges at him from a gun, Levitan fell backward. The result was a completely oriental picture. And then it happened that Levitan was tried. Kiselyov was the chairman of the court, brother Anton was the prosecutor, and he put on makeup specifically for this purpose. Both dressed in gold-embroidered uniforms that had survived from Kiselyov and Begichev himself. Anton made an accusatory speech that made everyone die of laughter.”

I.I. Levitan came to life in Babkino. In Moscow, in the Chekhov Museum there is his small sketch “The Istra River in Summer”. Look, reader. It's sunny! You can't write something like that when you're in a bad mood. It must be said that love came to the artist in Babkino.

“One day I was walking along the road from Babkin to the forest and unexpectedly met Levitan,” Maria Pavlovna Chekhova recalled in her declining years. - We stopped and started talking about this and that, when suddenly Levitan fell on his knees in front of me and... a declaration of love.
I remember how embarrassed I was, I felt somehow ashamed, and I covered my face with my hands.
“Dear Masha, every point on your face is dear to me...” I hear Levitan’s voice.

I couldn't find anything better to do than turn around and run away. The whole day I, upset, sat in my room and cried, buried in my pillow. Levitan came to dinner, as always. I didn't go out. Anton Pavlovich asked those around him why I was not there. Misha, seeing that I was crying, told him about it. Then Anton Pavlovich got up from the table and came to me.
- Why are you crying?
I told him about what happened and admitted that I didn’t know how and what to say to Levitan now. My brother answered me like this:
- Of course, if you want, you can marry him, but keep in mind that he needs women of Balzac’s age, and not people like you.

I was ashamed to admit to my brother that I did not know what “women of Balzac’s age” were. And, in essence, I did not understand the meaning of Anton Pavlovich’s phrase, but I felt that he was warning me about something. I didn’t answer Levitan then, and he again walked around Babkin like a gloomy shadow for a week. But soon all the Babkinites learned about this “incident”. It used to be that the father of the mistress of the estate, Vladimir Petrovich Begichev, would come and call:
- Well, Maryushka, let's go for a little walk.

He will take me by the arm and will certainly lead me towards the Levitan wing, and the closer we get, the tighter he presses my elbow so that I don’t run away. Then, as always happens in life, I got used to it and began meeting Levitan again. This is where our whole “romance” ended.”

I think that this is not the case after all. Maria Pavlovna decided to talk about this incident only at the very end of her life. Apparently, he meant too much to her. And Levitan, who throughout his life had success with women, before his death, when Maria Pavlovna visited him, already seriously ill, said to her: “If I ever married, it would only be to you, Masha.”

His stay in Babkino, his friendship with Mashenka, Chekhov, and his acquaintance with the Kiselyovs meant a lot in the artist’s life.

The writer Sergei Durylin, in his memoirs “In Your Corner,” has the following lines: “Levitan was very fond of Orthodox church services and often went to the church for the all-night vigil. He was amazed and captivated by the beauty of Orthodox worship. He found an abyss of poetry in the evening darkness of the small and cramped church, in the lights of the lamps, in the quiet singing, in the thin streams of incense wafting through the half-empty church, silent in the twilight. Living in Plyos, he loved M.P. Chekhova and often went to church with her for evening services. He transferred the old wooden Plyos church to the picture. - He was a Russian man, Russian with all his soul and all his talent... He loved Russian nature, as only a real Russian man who grew up among it can love it, and, as an artist, he never loved anything else except this nature, these birches , these churches, this quiet ringing over silent fields and copses. He never went to the synagogue, but he did not accept Orthodoxy either, and he did it smartly: he understood that in order to accept it, it was not enough to love churches, to love the beauty and poetry of church services, much more was also needed ... "

After his death, on the chest of I.I. Levitan they saw an Orthodox cross, which, it turns out, he had been wearing for a long time.

It can be assumed that the artist’s love for the Church awoke not without the influence of the Chekhovs, Kiselyovs and the monks of the Resurrection New Jerusalem Monastery, to which they went to services on Sundays and holidays...

At A.P. Chekhov’s Yalta dacha, in his favorite study, a sketch by I.I. Levitan was kept on the fireplace. Once, about three years after the artist’s death, when the conversation turned to him, Chekhov said, looking at the sketch:
- How little they value - how little they value Levitan’s things. After all, this is a shame. This is such a huge, original, original talent. This is something so fresh and strong that it should make a revolution. Yes, Levitan died early, early.

The perspicacious writer A.P. Chekhov in this case for the first time, one might say, made a mistake. Time has put everything in its place. Love for the artist I.I. Levitan in Russia has become truly nationwide.

"Levitan- singer of Russian nature."

Goals:

1. Introduce students to the works of I.I. Levitan.

2. Contribute to the cultivation of love for Russian nature and
Russian painting.

3. Develop a sense of beauty.

In those distant, deaf years, sleep and darkness reigned in our hearts, Pobedonostsev spread out his owl's wings over Russia. And there was neither day nor night, But only the shadow of huge wings...

“They were afraid to speak loudly, send letters, read books, were afraid to help the poor, teach them to read and write,” this is how A.P. Chekhov later depicted life in Pobedonostsev’s Russia in his “Man in a Case.”

More than one talent suffocated in this timelessness, more than one life ended tragically. Fate has minions, favorites. The artist Isaac Levitan, who grew up in a poor Jewish family and lost his father and mother at an early age, was her stepson. She gave Levitan so much grief and suffering that it would have been more than enough for several people. In the end, Levitan won the battle against poverty, managing to defend his talent.

One day at dusk, Levitan met a young woman at the gate of his house. The stranger walked slowly towards the station. Levitan did not see her face: it was covered with an umbrella. In the dim light, when she raised the umbrella, it seemed beautiful and familiar to him. Levitan returned to the closet and lay down. The candle was smoking, the rain was humming, and drunks were crying at the station. The longing for maternal, sisterly, feminine love entered the heart from then on and did not leave Levitan until last days his life.

That same fall, Levitan wrote “Autumn day. Sokolniki." This poetic picture of a thoughtful and sad autumn is the artist’s first work, his gray and golden autumn, sad as the Russian sky, like the life of Levitan himself, breathed from the canvas with cautious warmth and pinched the audience’s heart.

You stand in front of the painting and look. And gradually a complex feeling arises, permeating the picture needed by a person sadness, causing him to long for nature.

A young woman in black walked along the path of Sokolniki Park, through heaps of fallen leaves. She was alone among the autumn grove, and this loneliness surrounded her with a feeling of sadness and thoughtfulness.

“Autumn day. Sokolniki,” is Levitan’s only landscape where a person is present, and the figure of a person was painted by Nikolai Chekhov. After that, people never appeared on Levitan’s canvases. They were replaced by forests and pastures, foggy floods and the poor huts of Russia, voiceless and lonely.

• 
  Crocodile! - Levitan calls Anton Chekhov.
• 
  Aw! .
• 
  It's time to go to the forest! - Levitan shouts. He brought him a gun. Levitan's dog Vesta squeals with pleasure. Soon they go hunting.

And here is Levitan’s outbuilding, calling his dog Vesta to him,

The dear artist lives here, Gives her a jar of milk.

He gets up very, very early and then, without getting up from his seat,

And immediately he drinks Chinese tea. He touches the sketch lightly.

The humorous tone that Chekhov maintained remained in their relationship for a long time. In the evenings they went to the park and played tricks until late at night. Anton Pavlovich, wearing a turban and a robe made of two sheets, with his face smeared with soot, fired a blank charge at Levitan, dressed as a Bedouin. Then, with songs and jokes, they buried the “killed” one. On the outbuilding where Levitan lived they hung the inscription “Merchant Levitan’s Loan Fund,” and more than once they staged a mock trial of the “loan shark.”

They laughed until they dropped, playing pranks on each other. But they often over-salted it. It happened that Levitan would be offended and leave. Will disappear somewhere- then, for two or three days he is not visible. After many years of poverty, hunger, and loneliness, he was especially sensitive and easily vulnerable. He suffers, feeling some kind of alienation.

Lonely and not knowing warm human friendship, Levitan “clung” to Chekhov’s family with all his soul. He loves Anton Pavlovich, dreams of marrying his sister Maria Pavlovna, and is strongly attached to his classmate Nikolai Chekhov.

Here, in Babkino, Levitan’s soul seems to be thawing, as if Levitan’s sadness had either gone somewhere or was lurking. Levitan's work is easy and joyful. He paints the painting “Evening on the Plowed Field”, creates fresh, sunny canvases: “Bridge”, “First Greenery. May", "Towards evening. Istra River."

Isaac Levitan was very fond of the great Russian river Volga. He came here to paint his amazing landscapes. The three years spent on the Volga were filled with painful and joyful searches, so that later art historians could say the famous phrase: “Levitan discovered the reach, and the reach discovered Levitan.” Yes, here Levitan found himself: something unique appeared on his canvases, which gave Chekhov the right to call Levitan “the king among all modern landscape painters.” And this landscape painter, crowned by him, truly created a miracle! The soul, the movements of the heart are now in all his landscapes.

Levitan was an artist of sad landscapes. The landscape is always sad when a person is sad. For centuries, Russian literature and painting spoke of a boring sky, skinny fields, and lopsided huts.

Russia, poor Russia,

I want your gray huts,

Your songs are windy to me -

Like the first tears of love...

A great singer of Russian nature, the artist loved to repeat the poems of the Russian poet Nvgeny Baratynsky:

With nature alone he breathed life: The stream understood the babbling,

And I understood the speech of the tree leaves,

And he felt the vegetation of the grass... “This is what a landscape painter needs - to understand the conversation between water and trees, to hear how the grass grows,” said Levitan. “What a great happiness this is!”

Yes, Levitan loved the Volga! He came to the banks of the Volga more than once. But the problem is that he won’t come here, the weather is inclement. A gloomy sky, a gloomy river, an angry wind whips up small angry waves. It would seem how difficult it is to work in such bad weather! But it was precisely at this time that Levitan wrote his famous paintings dedicated to the Volga: “After the Rain”, “Ples”, “Evening on the Volga” and many others.

But on one of their trips it turned out to be a sunny day. And Levitan saw the Volga completely different. He created a painting which he called “Fresh Wind”.

Your soul feels light when you look at this landscape. The colors are joyful and clean. Blue sky, blue water, painted barges, an elegant white steamship.

Everything here is in motion. Overtaking each other, heavy barges float down the river. A nimble steamboat hurries towards them, leaving behind a long stream of smoke. A flock of seagulls rises and then sweeps over the water itself. A fresh wind ripples the water, inflates the sail, and drives fluffy clouds whipped up like foam across the sky. We feel the movement and business life of a navigable river.

Levitan's paintings require slow viewing. They are not overwhelming to the eye. They are modest and precise, like Chekhov's stories, but the further you look into them, the more lovely the silence of provincial towns, familiar rivers and country roads becomes.

Painting "After the Rain" was written in four hours. Clouds and the pewter color of the Volga water created soft lighting. It could disappear any minute. Levitan was in a hurry.

The picture contains all the charm of rainy twilight in a Volga town. The puddles sparkle. The clouds go beyond the Volga like low smoke. Steam from steamship pipes falls on the water. Barges near the shore turned black from dampness.

In such summer twilight, it is good to enter dry hallways, low rooms with freshly washed floors, where lamps are already burning and outside the open windows there is a noise from falling drops and the smell of an abandoned garden. It's good to listen to an old piano being played. Its weakened strings ring like a guitar. A dark ficus stands in a tub next to the piano. A high school student sits in a chair with her legs crossed and reads Turgenev. The old cat wanders around the rooms, and his ear twitches nervously - he listens for the knocking of knives in the kitchen.

The street smells like matting. Tomorrow is a fair, and carts are coming to Cathedral Square. The steamer goes down the river and catches up with a rain cloud that covered half the sky. The schoolgirl looks after the ship, and her eyes become misty and large. The steamer goes to the lower towns, where there are theaters, books, and tempting meetings.

And around the town, disheveled rye fields get wet day and night.

In the picture "Over eternal peace» the poetry of a stormy day is expressed with even greater force. The painting was painted on the shore of Lake Udomli in the Tver province.

From the slope, where dark birch trees bend under the gusty wind and an almost rotten log church stands among these birches, the distance of a remote river, meadows darkened by bad weather, and a huge cloudy sky opens up.

Heavy clouds, filled with cold moisture, hang above the ground. Slanting sheets of rain cover the open spaces. None of the artists before Levitan conveyed with such sad force the immeasurable distances of Russian bad weather. It is so calm and solemn that it feels like greatness.

Two people on a deserted road. Young beautiful woman in a wide-brimmed hat. The dark face contrasts with the whiteness of the hat. Big brown eyes. Dark curly hair. In his hands is a blue umbrella. Sofya Petrovna Kuvshinnikova and Levitan return home. She came with him to the Volga to write sketches.. The day was approaching evening.

• 
  We ended up in the wrong place... Strange!..
• 
  But this is Vladimirka, or what? Look - a milestone!..

• 
  Where does the road lead, grandma?
• 
  Which? Vladimirskaya?
• 
  Thank you, grandma. Everything is clear.

Everything here breathes grief, great human tragedy- grass, air, even birds flying over Vladimirka. Levitan found the strength to show people Vladimirka. He could reincarnate as a prisoner who is being driven through Vladimirka for who knows what, he could feel the weight of the shackles, hear their ringing, see the sky above the road... /Somewhere, at the very edge of the earth, a bright strip of sky is visible, there, apparently, looked out from - the sun is behind the clouds. What is this, hope? No. By the time you get there, the light will disappear, there is the same road, exhausting last strength, and the sky is as gray as a prisoner's robe.

Levitan shows a seemingly ordinary road laid across the steppe, under a gloomy sky. Quiet. Not a living soul... But the man stands in front of the picture and feels, precisely feels with his heart, with his whole being great tragedy centuries...
A few miles from Zatishya there was the estate of Bernovo, which belonged to Baroness Wulf. Levitan came there one day and noticed an old dam across the river. This motive interested him. The Baroness told him a tragic legend that had been passed down from mouth to mouth about this quiet backwater. G He heard a story about a tragedy that occurred at an abandoned mill and

which served Pushkin to create “The Mermaid”. The miller had a beautiful daughter, Natasha, and the baroness's grandfather had a very handsome young man. The young people fell in love with each other, but when Natasha was expecting a child, someone reported their secret love to the despot master. And he ordered the young man to be beaten to death, and then sent to be a soldier for life. Out of grief, Natasha drowned herself in the pool. Levitan listened to this story, and the abandoned dam took on a gloomy poetry for him. This is how the picture was conceived "At the Pool". A remote corner of the forest near an abandoned dam, which people usually try to avoid. Levitan perfectly conveyed the atmosphere of mysterious and wary silence that shrouded the “lost place” in the minds of the people. It's getting dark. The already gloomy and wild forest is plunged into shadows. As if spellbound, the deep oily waters stand motionless, equally ominous in the standing mirror on the right and in the disturbing ripples on the left. The golden reflections of the setting sun emphasize their bottomless black depth.

Log bridges and boards laid on the banks of the dam draw the viewer’s eye into the eerie thicket of the forest; it seems that someone has just walked along these boards and disappeared behind the bushes. The artist managed to convey the character of the depicted nature so well that when looking at the picture you begin to experience a vague premonition of some kind of trouble, alarming tension, eerie mystery, hostile to man, lurking death.

The closer to maturity, the more often Levitan’s thought stopped at autumn. Autumn in Levitan's paintings is very diverse. It's impossible to list everything autumn days, applied to the canvas. Levitan left about a hundred “autumn” paintings, not counting sketches.

They depicted things familiar from childhood: haystacks, blackened by dampness; small rivers swirling fallen leaves in slow whirlpools; lonely golden birches, not yet blown by the wind; a sky like thin ice; shaggy rains over forest clearings. But in all these landscapes, no matter what they depict, the sadness of farewell days, falling leaves, withering grass, the quiet hum of bees before the cold and the pre-winter sun, barely noticeably warming the earth, is best conveyed.
Kar tina "Golden Autumn". The forest dressed itself in “crimson and gold.” The foliage of birch trees blazes like an orange fire; it is the first to give the signal: autumn! Everything is festive and elegant. The air is so transparent that you can see distant distances: behind the green arable land there is a village at the very horizon. The colors are fresh, bright, joyful. And the sky... The sky is blue - blue. And light transparent clouds slowly float by. The river is quiet, “as if cast from glass.” No breeze, no movement in the leaves of the trees. Everything froze, hid... Why? Is it not before the rains, cold fogs, sometimes withering, dreary, not golden, but dull gray autumn? Why is this remembered in “Golden Autumn”? In the left corner of the picture you can see fallen leaves on the ground and the birch tree is already half bare.

Levitan writes “Blossoming Apple Trees”, “Ferns in the Forest”, “Summer evening". It's bright here joyfully, elegantly. He is tireless works. He lives either in Moscow or on the Volga, travels abroad, returns and again, with a brush in his hand, somewhere on the bank of a nameless river, or near the outskirts of an unprepossessing village, he writes and writes...

But his heart was not enough... Levitan knows that he is sick, but does not show it, so as not to upset his loved ones and friends. Suppressing her suffering, hiding her illness, she worries about Chekhov, sending him letter after letter to Crimea. About himself Levitan knows that he is doomed, that his heart disease is incurable, but he does not let go of his brush. Levitan is famous, but his days are numbered. The artist's health is deteriorating every day. He stubbornly fights the disease and does not give up.

I have suffered a lot, comprehended a lot, learned a lot... - he says, hoping to take up work in a new way. But on August 4, 1900, Levitan passed away. He was only forty years old.

In the 90s, Levitan’s work reflected the soul of an era that was outwardly everyday, thoughtful and sad, but concealed ripened forces, new thunderstorms and storms.

Once, speaking at a friendly dinner for the Itinerants on the occasion of the opening of the exhibition, Levitan said: “We must live, and live beautifully.” “We must overcome our suffering, we must use life, its light, its joy, like the shine of a sunny day.”

Levitan, as if awakened, turned to the joyful ways in which nature benefits man, and began to write solemn hymns to the earth, and not just look at it as a future grave. He was in a hurry to create canvases that would remain after him and could compete with the majestic immortality of nature itself.

He was too honest not to see the people's suffering. He became the singer of a huge poor country, the singer of its nature. He looked at this nature through the eyes of a tormented people - this is his artistic strength and this is partly the key to his charm.

Classroom equipment:

1. 
   Portrait of I.I. Levitan.
2. 
   Reproductions of paintings by I. Levitan.
3. 
   Cassette recording of music by P.I. Tchaikovsky, S. Rachmaninov, E. Grieg.

Isaac Ilyich Levitan is a Russian artist. Born on August 18, 1860 in the town of Kybarty, now Kybartai (Lithuania). Levitan's father is a teacher foreign languages, translator. The artist’s family lived very poorly; the pittance that his father received for French lessons was barely enough to feed himself. However, when the children developed an attraction to art, their parents took it with joy and helped them in every possible way. As a result, first the eldest son Abel, and then Isaac, entered the Moscow School of Painting.

The beginning of his career foreshadowed to be bright and successful, but soon his mother died, and then his father from typhus. At seventeen, Isaac Levitan found himself on the street, begging and wandering. For non-payment he is expelled from the school. However, his friends are collecting the required amount so that he can return to his studies. Soon, for his success in art, the council of teachers decides to exempt Levitan from paying and even award him a small stipend, since the painter’s condition was truly disastrous. Maybe it was precisely this attitude of teachers that helped in the development of Levitan. He did not give up, but continued to paint beautiful paintings, which now hang in all the most famous museums in the world.

At the age of seventeen, Levitan became a student of Vasily Grigorievich Perov. Sometimes Perov’s friend Savrasov joined the classes. Both teachers were Itinerant artists. They immediately noticed the talented guy and took Levitan into their workshop.

Despite the fact that Isaac lived in poverty for a long time, wandered, starved, and sometimes slept wherever he had to - in attics and on the street, his paintings were appreciated by many leading artists of that time. They admired his talent, the depth of the conveyed image, the seriousness of the presentation of painting. His paintings begin to appear at exhibitions.

The theater helped him escape from poverty. He writes scenery for operas and productions. Small earnings helped him go to Crimea. After he brought the paintings from Crimea, he gained real fame. All paintings sold out in a short time. Isaac Levitan painted about a thousand paintings during his life. He was friendly with the great people of his era, but in 1896, due to heart disease, Isaac Ilyich Levitan, the great Russian artist, left this world, leaving behind a great legacy of Russian culture.

Birch Grove

Near Bordighera

Stormy day

Hut in the meadow

Forest violets and forget-me-nots

Forest in winter

Summer evening. River

Bridge. Slavinskaya Sloboda

Above eternal peace

In the north

Nenyufars

Autumn day. Sokolniki

Autumn. Hunter

Apiary

After the rain. Plyos

Quiet abode

Reeds and water lilies

Isaac Ilyich Levitan is a Russian artist. Born on August 18, 1860 in the town of Kybarty, now Kybartai (Lithuania). Levitan's father is a foreign language teacher and translator. The artist’s family lived very poorly; the pittance that his father received for French lessons was barely enough to feed himself. However, when the children developed an attraction to art, their parents took it with joy and helped them in every possible way. As a result, first the eldest son Abel, and then Isaac, entered the Moscow School of Painting.

The beginning of his career foreshadowed to be bright and successful, but soon his mother died, and then his father from typhus. At seventeen, Isaac Levitan found himself on the street, begging and wandering. For non-payment he is expelled from the school. However, his friends are collecting the required amount so that he can return to his studies. Soon, for his success in art, the council of teachers decides to exempt Levitan from paying and even award him a small stipend, since the painter’s condition was truly disastrous. Maybe it was precisely this attitude of teachers that helped in the development of Levitan. He did not give up, but continued to paint beautiful paintings, which now hang in all the most famous museums in the world.

At the age of seventeen, Levitan became a student of Vasily Grigorievich Perov. Sometimes Perov’s friend Savrasov joined the classes. Both teachers were Itinerant artists. They immediately noticed the talented guy and took Levitan into their workshop.

Despite the fact that Isaac lived in poverty for a long time, wandered, starved, and sometimes slept wherever he had to - in attics and on the street, his paintings were appreciated by many leading artists of that time. They admired his talent, the depth of the conveyed image, the seriousness of the presentation of painting. His paintings begin to appear at exhibitions.

The theater helped him escape from poverty. He writes scenery for operas and productions. Small earnings helped him go to Crimea. After he brought the paintings from Crimea, he gained real fame. All paintings sold out in a short time. Isaac Levitan painted about a thousand paintings during his life. He was friendly with the great people of his era, but in 1896, from heart disease, Isaac Ilyich Levitan, the great Russian artist, left this world, leaving behind a great legacy of Russian culture.

Birch Grove

Near Bordighera

Stormy day

Hut in the meadow

Forest violets and forget-me-nots

Forest in winter

Summer evening. River

Bridge. Slavinskaya Sloboda

Above eternal peace

In the north

Nenyufars

Autumn day. Sokolniki

Autumn. Hunter

Apiary

After the rain. Plyos

Quiet abode

Reeds and water lilies

Evening on the Volga

Evening shadows

Evening bells

Evening. Golden Reach

Spring. Big water

Dilapidated courtyard. Plyos

Vladimirka

Overgrown pond

Golden autumn

Golden autumn. Slobodka

Source http://art-assorty.ru/130-levitan-hudozhnik-kartiny.html