LEVITAN, ISAAK (1860-1900) - photo 1
LEVITAN, ISAAK (1860-1900) - photo 1

LEVITAN, ISAAK (1860-1900)

Starting price
£ 200 000
Auction dateClassic
07.06.2017 12:30UTC +01:00
Auctioneer
MacDougall Arts Ltd.
Event location
United Kingdom, London
Archive
The auction is completed. No bids can be placed anymore.
Archive
ID 1468
Lot 72 | LEVITAN, ISAAK (1860-1900)
LEVITAN, ISAAK (1860-1900)


Autumn, signed.
Pastel and charcoal on paper, laid on cardboard, 52.5 by 75 cm.

200,000-250,000 GBP


Executed in the early 1890s.

Provenance: Collection of Ivan Tarasov, a prominent art collector, Moscow, c. 1944 (inscription on the reverse).

Authenticity certificate from the expert V. Petrov.
Authenticity has also been confirmed by the expert L. Torstensen.

Exhibited: Possibly, XIII periodicheskaia vystavka kartin Moskovskago obshchestva liubitelei khudozhestv, Imperial Russian History Museum, Moscow, 1893.
Possibly, XXIII peredvizhnaia vystavka Tovarishchestva peredvizhnykh khudozhestvennykh vystavok, Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow, 1895.

Literature: Possibly, exhibition catalogue, XIII periodicheskaia vystavka kartin Moskovskago obshchestva liubitelei khudozhestv, Moscow, 1893, No. 3, listed as Osen (Pastel).
Possibly, exhibition catalogue, XXIII peredvizhnaia vystavka Tovarishchestva peredvizhnykh khudozhestvennykh vystavok, Moscow, 1895, No. 103, listed as Osen. Pastel.
Possibly, G. Romanov, Tovarishchestvo peredvizhnykh khudozhestvennykh vystavok. 1871–1923 g.g. Entsiklopediia, St Petersburg, Sankt-Peterburg Orkestr, 2003, No. 8–103, listed as Osen. Pastel.

Isaac Levitan, the most renowned of Russian landscape artists, is represented in this catalogue by the elegiac pastel work, Autumn. Although Levitan is known primarily as a painter, the depth of his penetration into the life of nature and ability to capture its subtle changes are most apparent in his works on paper.

Levitan started to use pastels in the early 1890s, producing a whole series of striking and expressive works in the medium during the last decade of his life. As the art historian Alexei Fedorov-Davydov wrote in his monograph on Levitan: “The freedom and lightness of the artist’s figurative techniques are particularly apparent in the crayon strokes of these pictures... the intimate quality of pastel, its midway position between oil, on the one hand, and coloured drawing or water colour, on the other hand, give us a clear perception of the artist at work, as if the act of creation was unfolding before our eyes. We feel Levitan’s artistic individuality with a special immediacy, as if witnessing the movement of his hand.”

The airiness and softness of pastel enable the artist to convey the subtlest nuances of colour and to combine a generalised depiction of main masses with the expressiveness of certain details. The present lot demonstrates Levitan’s supreme mastery in a medium that was unusual for him. The picture captures the indefinable beauty and transient quality of Russian autumn.
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