Landscape at Volga 1890

This is Isaac Levitan's "Landscape at Volga," a pencil sketch of the iconic Russian river. Levitan, though Russian, was of Lithuanian Jewish heritage, a position that placed him on the margins of Tsarist society, fraught with antisemitism. Consider how landscape, a genre often associated with national identity, might carry different emotional weight for an artist whose belonging was always conditional. We see the Volga, not as a symbol of imperial power, but as an intimate, almost melancholic space. The sketch is unfinished, raw, and deeply personal. Levitan captures a quiet, contemplative moment, a sense of reverie in the face of nature. Levitan, a master of the "mood landscape," used nature to express inner emotional states. In this sketch, he lays bare the foundational gestures of his craft, inviting us to witness the birth of a feeling, the genesis of a vision.