Fog. Autumn. 1899 Isaac Ilyich Levitan (1860-1900)

Description of Isaac Levitan’s painting "Autumn. Fog."

Isaac Levitan was born in 1860 and was one of the significant landscape painters of the 19th century. He did not pursue bright colors or spectacular views. He presented everything simply and clearly.

Each appearance of a new work Levitan was his victory. He was admired and talked about everywhere. He was recognized as a great master.

Despite his complex character, when he could easily fall into a terrible moping or anger, with the presence of a desire for suicide, there was always room in his soul pure and penetrating mood for painting, which can be seen in all his works.

The effects that Levitan achieved in his landscapes are striking, arousing admiration. Using the technique of watercolor, the artist achieved purity of color and movement of leaves, as if the work was created in a lyrical landscape genre. He loved to work in this very technique, creating delightful works. The artist felt nature very subtly.

The mood of this painting is so shaky and elusive that one cannot help but catch his breath for a sense of all the purity of the autumn air. Entirely withdrawn into contemplation, the imagination dissolves into the thick whiteness of the mist just as the trees do.

The sensibility of painting suggests a certain sketchiness, an external incompleteness, or to be more precise, creates a sense of incompleteness. All these techniques in painting are the hallmark of pastels and watercolor paint.

From his childhood he remembers the beautiful meadows covered with leaves, sad and lush corners of his native spaces with birches and other various trees, which the Russian soil is rich in.

Technique of the style of pictorial symbolism, Levitan perceived already in the last years of his work, later forming his own direction, applying in the further writing of the later famous paintings.