Full Lecture on Isaac Levitan (Исаа́к Левита́н) | Andy Evansen

One of the artists who has influenced me quite a bit, he's not a watercolor artist, he was an oil painter, although he did do some watercolor and gouache little studies and things, but Isaac Levitan is another one of those artists who sadly has been a little bit underappreciated in history. He was a contemporary to a lot of the famous impressionist painters in Europe, but just because of circumstances in Russia that he is not nearly as well known as many of the impressionist painters, but he's definitely on a par talent-wise with all of them. He lived at a time when Russian painters were actually known as kind of the itinerants, a whole generation of them, because they were so underappreciated and undernown throughout the most of the Western world. He had a tough time even in his home country because he was Jewish and he was born to a very poor family, a Jewish family in Lithuania, and they immigrated to Russia and the border there. A lot of his career kind of coincided with Tsar Alexander III, who was extremely anti-Semitic and during his reign, you know, from 1880 to mid-1890s, enacted a lot of anti-Jewish measures, expelling Jews, 20,000 Jews from Moscow and preventing them from owning property and what jobs they could have and everything, so Levitan did not get a good deal in life starting out in addition to, you know, being an artist, but despite all that, he managed to break through all those social and religious and cultural barriers and he actually became known as one of Russia's most famous and revered artists, despite all of those things being stacked against him. He really wanted to take Russian art into a more contemporary time. He was aware of what was going on. He did eventually travel to Europe and so he knew what was going on in the art world, but at the time, Russia was still very enamored with Western art and in particular the extreme realism and the two large cities in Russia, Saint Petersburg and Moscow, Saint Petersburg was very Westernized and there were large, large collections with the wealthy people that collected Western art and he just wanted to make, like I said, do justice to Russia and make it contemporary and alive, but not just a pale imitation of academic European art. He painted a lot of the peasantry, which at the time, again, you know, that period was a great transition and the Impressionists in Europe were also doing this also. The subjects that they painted initially were kind of looked down upon because they weren't, you know, grand historical themes or religious themes or everything. They were just more everyday life and Levitin really embraced that as well. This is one of the first paintings I remember seeing of his and I think it was actually in a water, I don't remember where I saw it. It was in some kind of a watercolor gouache book, but I remember just being blown away that I, and I had heard the name Isaac Levitin. I knew who he was, but this was gouache and pencil on cardboard and when I saw that, I was like, wow, this is someone who just did, you know, he was poor. He worked on whatever he could get his hands on in order to create and it's just such a beautiful little impression. I love this painting and this is, again, this started my love affair with Levitin's work when I saw this little painting, Snowbound Garden, and it's very, you know, one of very few examples of a water media type painting of his, unfortunately, because he was obviously very skilled in that, but again, what really just kind of blew me away was the fact that it was painted on cardboard, but his landscapes again, you know, he just really, here's another example of water, a watercolor of his watercolor and white gouache on cardboard again. That's so bizarre that he painted on that and it's held up, you know, it's in the Russian Museum in St. Petersburg. This painting is a painting of fog. It's so subtle and beautiful. So he was obviously very skilled working in water media too, but most of the paintings I'll be showing you are obviously oil paintings, maybe a few acrylics mixed in there as well. But, you know, he just managed to really show the diversity and beauty of the Russian landscape. He wasn't concerned with, you know, again, all these highly realistic and grand themes that were going on at the time with the European art. And I think that's what really spoke to me. I've talked about this before with my affinity for the British watercolor artists, in particular, you know, Trevor Chamberlain and Edward Segoe. And when I saw their work, I just, I loved how they just kind of tackled these everyday normal landscapes and elevated these beautiful scenes that you just, you know, would drive by or walk by. Everybody does, you know, multiple times a day and maybe not even think twice about. And something in these artists, they saw these subjects as paint worthy, you know, and elevating them into artwork. And I really have a great admiration for artists who can, who managed to do that. And Levitan is one of the best examples here. So again, I'm just going to kind of, I don't want to make this a biography of Levitan. There's books and information out there if you want to search for him on the internet and learn more about him. But I've got a couple of books of his work and many of these images I'm going to share I just found online. You know, I apologize, some of them I actually took photos of with my phone because I couldn't download the photo, but I wanted to share the painting and stuff. So it might not be the best quality, but again, I think he's one of these artists in history that's been lost a little bit. His name isn't as famous as a lot of the French impressionists and, but it definitely deserves to be up there. So again, he just kind of treated, you know, the peasant life that was very prevalent in Russia at that time. And he saw something in that that was very noble and elevated that in his artwork. He loved that aspect of it. And again, I think a lot of what Levitan's work speaks to me as an artist, growing up in rural Midwest. I've talked about this before. I don't live in the big cities of the East Coast or the grand, you know, vistas of the Rocky Mountains and the Pacific Coast and the ocean. I spent my life living on or living on, but the living around a lot of scenes like this, you know, the landscape was fairly flat. We have lakes and rivers and little farms, but there's a very subtle beauty to those themes, I think, those subtle themes. And they're still there to this day. And that's, I mean, Levitan painted these, you know, almost 200 years ago, about 120 years ago, you know, around the turn of the century in 1900. But they still, for whatever reason, they still resonate with me, these types of scenes. And so he's always been one of my biggest influences. I'll just share a couple more here, these just kind of peasant homes. Another thing that I like about his work, and I've mentioned this before in some people's critiques, and again, there's nothing wrong with putting people in your paintings. Okay, I don't want to make it sound like that. But I know there's this kind of, I don't know, there's just this movement or a thought out there that, boy, if I put a figure in here, that'll finish this off, or I got to put a person in this painting. And you know, whatever, you don't always have to have people in there. So he's obviously these paintings, he's painting, you know, the farm animals, and it's a place where there's people living there intending these animals. This is a well kept little home, there's obviously people living there. But he doesn't always have to include the figures in his work. And I like that too, he just sees, he's painting his time. And again, I think that's an important thing to remember, too. And keep in mind, with what we're doing. I talk about this a lot with my workshop students, I always say, you know, when you're looking for something to paint, don't drive around and, you know, constantly and try and take photos of these amazing vistas and scenes and things that I call them calendar photos. There are beautiful things to paint all around us. And these are the areas that Levitan grew up around the walking around the countryside. And that is just such a beautiful painting. And nothing remarkable about the scene at all. But elevating the ordinary, seeing the beauty in the familiar, and treating it in a way, again, that elevates it into a work of art from something that you just see every day. And that, in my mind, that that's what true art is, anybody can try and capture, you know, something that's already really beautiful. And if they're highly skilled, they managed to do it most of the time, they don't manage to actually capture what's out there. But you know, when you can take something that you just walk by and you paint that, and it just tugs at the heartstrings. And it's so, like I said, familiar, people resonate, resonates with people, you know, these simple compositions, subtle tones, people are reminded, and I hear that all the time with my work, and I'm sure Russians felt that way about Levitan's work. They're reminded of their own childhood experiences in the countryside. I love painting these little farmlands and dirt roads and country roads and things. But I hear get those comments all the time from people. But all that reminds me of when I was growing up, you know, and driving through Iowa or Kansas or Nebraska or whatever country or location you might have been in. But that's important painting something that's familiar to you. And again, not just constantly searching out these grand vistas, but they're wonderful paintings all around us. He was obviously kind of an impressionistic painter, which again, kind of set him apart. He was at that kind of forefront of the movement there around the late 1800s, along with the French impressionists, where his work wasn't highly rendered, I'm sorry, you know, finely executed works that were popular. So he did, there was a little bit of a backlash, it took him a little bit longer, you know, to become recognized and collected. But he was actually an artist that he didn't live very long, going back to that first frame that I showed you. He was born in 1860 and died in 1900. He's only 39 years old. And that's another thing that blows me away about Levitan when I see his paintings. He wasn't even 40 years old when he died. And he managed. I mean, just he's like Sergeant, just this insane level of skill and heart and talent, ability and what would have happened. I mean, Sergeant lived to a much older age, but Levitan sadly died. He had a bad heart and died way too young. But my goodness, what this artist could have done with another 30 years on this, on this earth would have been, sadly, we were robbed of that as, as art appreciators, what Levitan could have done. But again, I mean, boy, when you see his eye and what he saw just in his surroundings, what he chose to paint, I absolutely love it. And that's what makes me so excited every time I see his work. He became kind of known as a mood landscape painter, I guess. And that goes along with that impressionistic style. You're not just trying to, you know, faithfully render all the details. You're trying to capture the mood, the time of day, the feeling, what's happening in there, you know, that sense of light and the colors. And obviously, you know, before photography, he was painting on location a lot. And what I want to want you to notice particular in this scene, look at the colors in the shadows of this painting, the shadow areas, the shadow sides of the buildings, the shadow of the rock wall, those beautiful blues and violets. It's not just dull black or gray. Okay, there's, there's color in the shadows. And that just comes from, you know, being very observant, painting on location. I love this painting, just a little footbridge over a little ditch or something outside. But again, you know, you're getting the sense that this is a, obviously a village with multiple dwellings, this pathway coming across there with the bridge, a well-traveled little path, but no, there's no human element, actual human element, other than the implied human element of, you know, the cut logs and the buildings and things. And that kind of speaks to me too. I didn't always used to do that. I fell into that trap of, you know, trying to put people and everything into all my scenes. But more and more, especially in the last five years, I just, I've just been eschewing that a little bit and kind of painting the landscape as is. And again, just kind of showing that implied human connection to nature. But that is just an, what a gorgeous painting that is. Again, a little village on the river. Look at the indication of those geese or ducks or whatever it is, you know, taking off off of the water. So simple, so beautiful. That little sliver of moon rising up in the dull gray clouds. Just a gorgeous painting. So yeah, again, this is just kind of meant, hopefully, I know it's not for everybody, obviously, we all have our tastes, but I just, it's very sad in my mind that Levitan isn't more known. So I wanted to, for my monthly deliverable here, just to kind of introduce you to some more of his works. And this goes along with those, you know, how he became known as a mood painter, just kind of showing that. And I'm going to give some examples here. I did a whole monthly deliverable on Nocturnes. Some of you who are new to the group, if you haven't had a chance to watch that, that's one of my favorite monthly deliverables that I talk about painting night scenes and the color of night, Frederick Remington's great book, The Color of Night. But they're not always just dull black and gray or whatever. If you are observant and spend time, and again, this is, he's not painting from photographs, he's out there on location, either painting from memory back in the studio or actually painting on location before the the light is completely gone. But he sees all these beautiful, subtle nuances and colors and values in his twilight scenes and his moonscapes that I just absolutely love. And these are some again, some examples of earlier paintings of his that I became familiar with a long time ago, that his night scenes, because that's something that I really enjoy too, that twilight time of day. And that's why I think watercolor is a good medium for me painting that because it's much faster to set up. And, you know, you can get that impression down really quickly of the colors and the values and oil painting sometimes takes a little bit more time. So watercolor is great for kind of capturing these little, those fleeting moments. But there again, this is just a subject that, you know, a gate going into a property, but the fact that the sun was catching it in just such a beautiful way, that last light, and for him to see a painting out of that is just so inspiring to me. I love it. This is one of his most well known paintings, Twilight Moon, I think this might actually be the sketch for it, the oil sketch on location. And then this is kind of the more finished version of it that he did back in the studio. Just an incredible painting. But again, twilight, a moonrise, it's not dull, black, gray, there's beautiful, subtle tones. And when you see an artist who does nocturnes like that, you know that they've actually spent time standing there and observing and letting your eye adjust and noticing the subtle value shifts and color nuances and things that are happening there. And sadly, you know, we live in this world now where we have these phones in our pockets and great cameras, and you can snap a shot and I'm not lecturing, I'm guilty of the same thing. I paint from photographs too. But, you know, back in the day when these guys were painting, these impressionists, they were on location and it shows in their work. It's unbelievable how convincing, subtly beautiful some of these paintings are. Finally, here we have a little bit of an indication of life. You know, a little figure walking out, but even that figure, much like the birds on the river of the other painting, just so simply indicated that you barely even notice the figure walking out there. But again, the beautiful tones of that twilight landscape, and then these so-called nocturnes that he did, you know, almost a moonlight. These are some of them that really, really spoke to me because it's kind of a running joke, even in our family. Excuse me, in the wintertime when there's a beautiful moon and I'm looking out the window or from I just kind of noticed the light, you know, if I'm walking around the house and I look outside and you see the moonlight on the snow and how incredibly beautiful it is. And I walk out, I quickly throw some boots on and people, where are you going? You know, dad's going out to take photos or look, walk in the snow in the moonlight again. I just, I love that when you see, you know, the moon is so bright and you can see the whole landscape almost like it was a midday scene. So these kind of nocturnes that Levitan did are some of my absolute favorite paintings. Very tonal, so beautiful and subtle. They read as night, but they have a lot of, a lot more high key value. And again, it just makes you, it gives you the impression that he actually either sat there with his easel and paints and painted and gave his eyes time to adjust to the darkness so he could see these things or painted them from memory back in the studio after just standing there and looking at this scene for a long time. But you do, when you're doing these nocturnes, you have to give your eyes a chance to adjust and start seeing these subtle values. And some of these might be a little bit, you know, brighter. I'm not sure. Like I said, I kind of took them off the internet and took photos off of examples of his paintings. This one in particular, I think was actually a little bit more dark and moody than what you're seeing here, but you do still get the sense of the, you know, how much light that he manages to get in those moody twilight paintings of his. I love that, the little fire going there in the landscape. So again, none of these, if I go back through them again, you know, they're not anything grand, a little path with a wooden bridge, a path with a couple of trees, the path, you know, the warm color on the road there showing where all the, maybe just a little bit of dirt showing through. But, you know, just seeing these beautiful paintings off of, you know, scenes that aren't majestic or anything. This is an incredibly beautiful, moody painting. Wow. This twilight scene, fog on the marsh under the moonlight. Boy, that is one of the most beautiful impressionistic paintings I've ever seen. So his nocturnes are definitely something to be inspired by and study if you're not aware of them. And again, this is something that I love to do too. They're just, for whatever reason, you just kind of see something. If you spend enough time in an area and I love to paint this little area, the Midwest around here, I drive around and I go for long walks and you just notice little subtle changes in the landscape. The field changes the color or the sky is a little different. Or, you know, in this instance, the snow is melting and the shape of the snow breaking up a little patch of snow. It becomes a painting subject, you know, when you're out there observing, again, elevating the ordinary, just a tree stump, you know, yeah, there's the water in the background and everything, but the tree stump is kind of the star of the show. And there's just something, you know, to having that kind of an artistic eye of just being able to walk around your surroundings and landscape and notice the possibilities of making a painting from this. So, and again, that's a big part of why I'm kind of showing you his work because I'm hoping it inspires you. You know, when I'm going through the critiques and even some of the things that you post on Facebook and stuff, there's definitely, you know, a tendency amongst many of you to just tackle way too much. You know, there's nothing wrong with painting a tree instead of 40 trees, okay? It's a really difficult thing when you're painting 40 trees that you have to simplify them or it becomes way too much. And most of the time we kind of get involved in every tree and then it becomes so busy. So, if you want to, you know, get involved, just paint one tree. This is such a beautiful work of art, this study, and the background is unfinished. It's not competing with it. He was on location. Maybe the light changed and he didn't have time to finish everything else, but he gave the impression of the day, the season with the sky, the greens, got that beautiful form. He gave justice to this tree, okay? And that's another thing that I've talked about. Don't have this cartoon image and just get sloppy with these trees and the way you paint them. The branches come forward, they go backwards, they come out from the side, they cast shadows onto each other. You know, down here, you're seeing these little cast shadows from this branch down to that branch. All those things really matter, okay, when you observe and pay attention and, you know, try, like I said, be a little bit more reverent to what's around you. These unbelievable tree studies that he did are just insane. That painting is unbelievable. That's one of the best tree paintings ever done. And how many of us, again, you know, when you're just walking around, oh, there's a subject, you know? I don't know. This one, I don't know if I would tackle that one in particular, but again, you know, some trees are in light, some of them are in shadow. The color shifts, the size shifts. There's great variety in color and tone and light and everything in there. And he managed to make just an amazing painting out of just a walk in the woods, which is not an easy thing to do, trust me. And, you know, he was born in, like I mentioned at the outset, into a, it was a poor Jewish community, but it was a Jewish community. They lived in cities after his parents, his parents died when he was very young. And so, but he did spend most of his youth growing up in cities. And he befriended Anton Chekhov, a famous writer in Russia, and he wrote about the Russian landscape a lot the way, in the same manner that Levitan painted it, just kind of revered the simplicity of nature. And I think initially, it kind of sounds like when I read biographies of Levitan's stories, he didn't feel comfortable. It was a little depressing being out in these vast, you know, Russian landscapes, a little desolate, but he really learned to revere the landscape. And he just started seeing these amazing painting subjects out of almost nothing. This painting almost makes me want to weep how beautiful it is. It is so, just so gorgeous. The color shifts in the waves, this warmer kind of green gray to this more of a slate gray to the blue going back. It's just such a beautifully moody painting, so well observed, so well handled. And, you know, again, just finding these little subjects from your daily walks or what's around you, it's important, but obviously a highly skilled painter in his few years that he had here. Does this remind you of anything? I think we had one of those challenges where I gave you the long sweeping shadows across the field. I love this kind of a theme too. I found this painting after, well after, when I was trying to put this together, I was going through paintings of Levitan's. I'm like, hey, that reminds me of that kind of step by step or challenge I put out for you with the cloud over the field and the long shadows raking there. So again, he's always had an influence in what I want to paint, how I want to paint, even though he's an oil painter and I'm a watercolor painter, especially out here in the Midwest, we get these big skies. I've been doing a lot of big kind of dramatic cloudy skies and storm clouds and stuff lately too. I love doing that, doing justice to the sky when you're going to do this. I talked about that. Look how low the horizon line is. I mean, it's barely an inch up that painting. It's all about the sky. Okay. When you're going to make the sky, the star of the show, you don't need much down on the landscape. That's just a remarkable painting. Also hardly anything there. And then eventually, so the largest river in Europe is the Volga River running through Russia. I think it's over, I think it's over a couple thousand miles long. And he, for whatever reason, never really saw it until he was almost 30 years old, I think. And when he first saw it, I remember reading a book that he was just kind of not very impressed by it. It was a large flat river. It wasn't a rushing river or anything, the stillness of it. And, and again, just kind of that feeling that he had of desolation being out in the openness and not very vibrant, but he really learned to appreciate the rivers and the waterways too. And that became a very important element in his paintings. Also, now this is more about the cloud shadow. And again, that's all it takes to make a subject. I mean, the whole, you could even without the cloud shadow, if you block that out, it's a beautiful river, the colors, the sky is gorgeous, but all of a sudden, bam, a cloud shadow on the riverbank, and you've got an amazing painting, a subject for a painting. I love that. And here again, you know, the indication of mankind's relationship with the river, you know, the harmony of it, obviously using it for transport and industry and fishing and livelihoods, but there's not a human in sight. It's just the boats, you know, that implied kind of mankind's interaction with nature, but that vast, wide, flat, it's very, again, kind of very similar to what we have here in the Midwest with the Mississippi River. You know, it gets very wide, very fast. It's so flat out here. Sometimes it's really difficult to come up with a composition. And Levitan's work is really inspiring in that way for me. This is another common theme on the Mississippi River here. When all our snow melts, the flooding and the backwaters and stuff, these trees that are just, you know, this is so similar to a scene not far south of here. I might drive down to Red Wing. There's this little marsh area where there's all these dead trees sticking up, and every spring, it's kind of strong. But when I saw this painting, I'm like, that could have been painted here in Minnesota. It's amazing. I love this painting. But again, he just started to really kind of embrace all the natural beauty. Obviously, Russia is a huge country and offers a wide variety of subject matter. But for most of his career, he pursued the more urban areas and just kind of really sought to elevate these rural, subtle, beautiful scenes that really spoke to the Russian people. And that's what made him so beloved in the end. It was a unique style that kind of blended all the Impressionism of Europe and his, you know, his travels and everything, but he brought it back home. He did finally, I think, in the last decade of his life, in the 1890s, he started traveling into Europe. And so he became more exposed to other styles of painting. He was credited with bringing Impressionism into Russia, again, and kind of helping that movement take root in Russia from Europe. But once again, just kind of a scene of the boat on the river without people showing man's interaction on the Volga River. But, excuse me, yeah, his travels into Europe really made an impression on him also. And even though he was credited mostly with bringing Impressionism into Russia, he was actually more influenced, it sounds like, with the Barbizon painters, who were also, you know, their movement was, Corot was one of their primary, most well-known artists, and he loved Corot's work above all, I think. But the Barbizon artists live in a village called Barbizon on the edge of the forest, Fontainebleau. And they were back in the 1840s, so they preceded his work by almost 50 years, really. But they were very instrumental in changing the taste of Parisian art viewers and buyers into more of the landscape and away from urban scenes and religious themes. And, you know, I think Levitin embraced the Barbizon painters more than that. But I love this, once again, just kind of that little indication of a grand landscape, just a little bit of human interaction with the smoke from the train. But his travels into Europe, it did make a big impression on him. He enjoyed his travels. And again, it's just such a shame that he didn't live longer. This was in the very last, he was only in his 30s, last decade of his life, when he finally got a chance to travel outside of Russia and see some other countries and, you know, bring that home and incorporate into his style. But he was still, even though, and that's important, too, he wasn't copying the Impressionists. And most of us, you know, you kind of pick up little tidbits from them and try to incorporate it into your own style and try to stay uniquely yourself. It's a hard thing to do. But Levitin managed to do that. His paintings were still, you know, very uniquely Russian. This is what his Twilight Haystacks kind of reminded, very reminiscent of Monet's work, obviously. And that was painted later in his career also after his trip. So it makes you think that he definitely studied them. So I'm just going to end this off. And it's a little bit of a shorter one here. Again, I just wanted to inspire you a little bit with Levitin's work. I'm going to end this off with a quote of his with this, looking at this gorgeous painting, Marsha, Evening. It says, Can there be anything more tragic than the feeling of endless beauty and everything around you, and not to be able, realizing your inadequacy, to express all these great emotions, finally. Yeah, that's the great challenge of an artist, all that beauty around us and trying to be able to capture it, capture it adequately. All right, I hope you enjoyed that. Thanks for watching and happy painting. Hi, my name is Andy Evenson. Over the course of this year, I'll be discussing a lot of ways to improve your paintings with a focus on watercolor in particular. Watercolor is a popular medium, but there are technical issues that can become stumbling blocks during the learning process. Painting becomes a lot more fun once you solve them and can start refining your craft. I'll cover topics that are unique to watercolor, such as painting wet and wet, the timing and consistency of your washes, the importance of drawing and negative shape making, and more. I'll also be talking a lot about how vital it is to have a plan. Transparent nature of watercolor means you're limited in the amount of fixing you can do once you've started. And indecisiveness, that's what leads to the weak, muddy paintings. Because this course spans a calendar year, you'll be able to see me painting outdoors on location, as well as in the studio. We can talk about the differences and similarities of both. I've taught dozens of three- to five-day workshops, and most of the time, just as students are starting to figure things out, it's time to say goodbye. This course through Tucson Art Academy Online allows me to work with you for an entire year, so we'll be able to get into things that just aren't possible in a four-day workshop. As an artist who also loves to teach, I'm really excited about the possibilities of this. I hope you'll join me.