Isaac Levitan and the Nizhny Novgorod Region — the Nizhny Novgorod chapter in the biography of landscape painter Isaac Ilyich Levitan (1860–1900). In the spring of 1887 he arrived on the Volga for the first time and spent nearly two months in Vasilsursk, a small town at the confluence of the Sura River and the Volga [1][2]. From there he brought back dozens of studies; it was here that the ideas for Flood on the Sura and Evening on the Volga were born — the latter being the first painting in which the expanses of the Volga became a philosophical theme for the artist [1][3]. In 1896, Levitan was represented by eighteen works at the All-Russian Exhibition in Nizhny Novgorod [2].
First Trip to the Volga
In the spring of 1887, Levitan set out for the Volga for the first time. He left Moscow alone and chose Vasilsursk — a town of Nizhny Novgorod Governorate on a high bank at the confluence of the Sura and the Volga — as his place to live and work. The bank, crowded with houses, churches, and izbas (traditional wooden houses), was known for its picturesque beauty and called the Swiss Riviera of the Volga [1]. The trip lasted roughly two months [2]: according to the Tretyakov Gallery, these were April and May [1]; according to the Russian Museum, May and June [4].
Spring came late that year: lingering cold rains, a low grey sky, floodwaters that refused to recede, gnarled trees standing in the cold water. Wind and rain made work impossible, and his first impression of the great river proved a bitter one [1]. Levitan wrote to Anton Chekhov: "I had been waiting for the Volga as a source of powerful artistic impressions, but instead it seemed to me so dreary and dead that my heart ached" [1][5]. The high right bank appeared to him covered with stunted shrubs and ravines, the left bank entirely submerged in forest, "and over all of it a grey sky and a strong wind" [5]. The artist regretted not having stayed in Moscow, where he could work in peace among friends — in Babkino and Zvenigorod [3].
Other letters to Chekhov from that same spring speak of insomnia, the loneliness of being "here in the back of beyond," and envy of "the peaceful snoring on the other side of the wall from my two landladies." In those same letters appears one of his most celebrated confessions: "I have never loved nature so much, nor been so sensitive to it" [5].
Works from the Vasilsursk spring
Levitan returned to Moscow with dozens of studies depicting the Volga, Vasilsursk, the surrounding countryside, and apiaries [1]. Among the Volga landscapes of 1887, the chronicle of his life and work lists "The Apiary," "The Flood on the Sura," and "Vasilsursk" [2].
The plein-air study "The Flood" — a river spread to the horizon, a low sky with racing clouds, boats abandoned at the bank — conveys the mood of those first weeks on the Volga; it served as one of the preparatory works for the painting "The Flood on the Sura." The study is painted in oil on canvas mounted on cardboard; the Tretyakov Gallery acquired it in 1962 [1].
Also dating from 1887 is the graphic work "The Apiary" from the collection of the Russian Museum — one of the artist's pieces on the apiary theme, executed in a muted grey-green palette with a single vivid accent: the orange disc of a rising moon [6].
| Work | Year | Location |
|---|---|---|
| "Flood. Study" | 1887 | State Tretyakov Gallery [1] |
| "Flood on the Sura" | 1887 | private collection, Moscow [1][2] |
| "Vasilsursk" | 1887 | V. D. Polenov Museum-Reserve [2] |
| "The Apiary" | 1887 | State Tretyakov Gallery [2] |
| "Evening on the Volga" | 1887–1888 | State Tretyakov Gallery [3] |
"Evening on the Volga"
The principal painting to grow out of Levitan's impressions of Vasilsursk was Evening on the Volga. He began it immediately after the trip [1] and worked on it in Moscow during the winter of 1887–1888, stripping away the incidental and distilling what he had felt on the river [3]; according to the gallery, he finished it in other Volga locations [1]. Pavel Tretyakov purchased the canvas from the artist in 1888 [3].
The small canvas holds an immense expanse of river with its wide bend and powerful current. Dusk thickens; storm clouds hang over the steel-cold, blue-grey water; the landscape contains neither a human figure nor a bird. The entire picture is resolved in a grey palette — from near-black to leaden and the metallic gleam on the water. The Tretyakov Gallery calls it Levitan's first work in which a landscape motif rises to the level of reflection on humanity and the world [3].
The impressions the river made on him overcame his initial disappointment: the following year Levitan returned to the Volga, but stopped this time in Plyos, to which he returned for several years running [3].
Vasilsursk and the Memory of the Artist
Vasilsursk counts Levitan among its notable visitors: the Vorotynsky District local history museum lists him alongside Maxim Gorky and Ivan Shishkin [7]. The very spots the artist painted no longer exist: the spreading Cheboksary Reservoir swallowed the low bank of the Volga and the waterfront part of the town [8].
Levitan at Nizhny Novgorod Exhibitions
In 1896, Levitan was represented by eighteen works at the All-Russian Industrial and Art Exhibition in Nizhny Novgorod [2]. The exhibition's art section was housed in a pavilion designed by A. N. Pomerantsev and brought together sculpture, architecture, collections of watercolorists' and artists' societies, and works of the Society for Travelling Art Exhibitions [9]; contemporary painting there was represented by Levitan, Polenov, and Nesterov [10].
Today Levitan's paintings are part of the permanent exhibition "Russian Art" at the Nizhny Novgorod State Art Museum in Building 3 of the Nizhny Novgorod Kremlin [11].
Sources
- my.tretyakov.ru — State Tretyakov Gallery — I. I. Levitan. "Flood. Study," 1887. Oil on canvas on cardboard, 19.4 × 32.2 cm, inv. Zh-239: catalogue entry
- tg-m.ru — Tretyakov Gallery Magazine — M. Chizhmak. Chronicle of the Life and Work of Isaac Levitan (No. 3, 2010, pp. 58–71; special issue "Isaac Levitan") (archive)
- my.tretyakov.ru — State Tretyakov Gallery — I. I. Levitan. "Evening on the Volga," 1887–1888. Oil on canvas, 57.5 × 89 cm, inv. 1474: catalogue entry
- rusmuseumvrm.ru — Virtual Russian Museum — Levitan Isaac Ilyich (1860–1900): biography and works in the Russian Museum collection
- isaak-levitan.ru — Levitan Encyclopedia — Letters of I. I. Levitan to A. P. Chekhov, spring 1887 (archive)
- rusmuseumvrm.ru — Virtual Russian Museum — I. I. Levitan. "Apiary," 1887. Watercolour, gouache, graphite pencil, 22.5 × 34.3 cm, R-56717: catalogue entry (archive)
- muzeum-vrt.ru — Vorotynsky District Museum of Local History — Vasilsursk: on the 500th Anniversary of the Settlement (archive)
- nn-tourist.ru — Tourist Portal of Nizhny Novgorod Region — Vorotynets: Vasilsursk, Shishkin Cape, Eagle's Nest (archive)
- tehne.com — Vsemirnaya Illyustratsiya — All-Russian Art and Industry Exhibition of 1896 in Nizhny Novgorod. St. Petersburg: Herman Hoppe Publishing House, 1896 (journal prize) (archive)
- Kommersant (Volga Region) — The 16th All-Russian Exhibition of 1896 in Nizhny Novgorod: Legacy and History (archive)
- artmuseumnn.ru — Nizhny Novgorod State Art Museum — "Russian Art" Exhibition (Kremlin, Building 3) (archive)