Isaak Levitan’s Images of the Unknown

Throughout fin de siècle Russia, an interest in Symbolism appeared in the works of various artists, including Isaak Levitan. His relationship to early Symbolism becomes apparent through an understanding that some of his landscapes may impart his spiritual ideas and physical sufferings. Through some of his landscapes, the painter sought to convey his conceptions of nature, the cosmos, and God as well as aspects of his Jewish identity and the focus of artists and poets of the fin de siècle on mortality. His efforts to convey his spiritual concerns along with his recurring depressive states and failing health allows for some of his paintings to be recognized as reflections upon his understanding of creation’s unity, humanity’s impermanence, death’s secrets, and eternity’s unfathomableness. Levitan’s engagement with the Symbolist themes of an animistic nature, mortality, dissolution, and transcendence suggest the importance of considering some of his landscapes as proto-Symbolist works.