Tanais Gallery
Isaac Levitan. The Lake. Russia (Rus).
1899-1900.
Oil on canvas. 149 x 208.
The State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia.
The last, unfinished Levitan painting.
Levitan spent the last year of his life at Chekhov’s home in Crimea. In spite of the effects of a terminal illness, his last works are increasingly filled with light. They reflect tranquility and the eternal beauty of Russian nature.
The main product late of Levitan became the large picture "Lake" (1898-1900), or, as the artist named it for itself, - The Lake. Russia. Begun, under some items of information, under impression from poetry of the Alexander Pushkin, above illustrations to which he worked at the end of 1890 years, and first of all from landscape motive of a poem " O storm-cloud, the tempest's survival ".
Alexander Pushkin.
Storm-cloud
1835.
O storm-cloud, the tempest's survival, alone
Like mad do you rush o'er the heavenly dome;
Alone do you cast as you drift on your way
A dark, brooding shade on the jubilant day.
A short while ago you lay cloaking the sky,
And great forks of lightning flared round you on high.
You thundered and roared over forest and plain
And fed thirsting earth with a bounty of rain.
Enough! Make you haste! Do not tarry... Begone!
The earth is refreshed, and the rain-storm has flown,
And tame though the wind is, it stubbornly tries
To make you desert the now radiant skies.
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This cloth became Swan-Song of Levitan.
Alexander Blok.
Oh, how desperately I want to live...
1914.
Oh, how desperately I want to live:
Immortalize the real,
Personify thefaceless,
Give flesh to the nonexistent!
Life's crushing dream may smother me
I may suffocate as I dream, -
And yet a lighthearted youth, perhaps
Will say of me in times to come:
Let us forgive his gloom - could it be
That it was really his secret drive?
"He's but a child of goodness and light
He's but freedom's triumph!"
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