Characteristic of his work is a hushed and nearly melancholic reverie amidst pastoral landscapes largely devoid of human presence.
His palette was generally muted, and his tendencies were more naturalistic and poetic than optical or scientific.
Levitan’s attitude towards nature and the poetry of his art were in many points akin to the works of Anton Chekhov, who became his friend from the late 1870s. If his earlier works were chiefly of an intimate and lyrical character, his mature art becomes philosophical, expressing the artist’s meditation about man and the world. These pictures were particularly loved by the Russian intellectuals of the time, for they represented the purest specimen of the ‘mood landscape’, most popular in Russia at the end of the 19th century. To this period belongs The Vladimirka Road (1892), a rare example of social historical landscape; Levitan painted the tragically famous road, along which convicts were marched to Siberia.
Fyodor Tutchev.
For naught -- man's read of Nature's credo:
He sees an imprint, lifeless mask --
While this Muse's soul is live with freedom,
Through love she speaks in all her tasks.
Translated by Athena
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