Landscape with Storm Clouds

The skilfully captured and harmonious sight of a turbulent sky as if before a storm, painted from nature in the Plos or Tver province, is distinguished by its nuanced and fluid expression. These were places where Levitan, absorbed in the life and the spirit of nature, painted forests, the vast expanses of Volga riversides, and the banks of streams. A small landscape with a simple theme, perhaps one of the 300 sketches he left after his death, reveals a special mood of philosophical contemplation.

Text author Nijolė Tumėnienė

The landscapes painted in Russia by Isaak Levitan were always shrouded in Litvak melancholy. This feature is also prominent in the work of the interwar Vilnius artists Janusz Trefler and Jakob Szer. Art critics found Max Band’s paintings sombre. The French critic N. Frank wrote: ‘It was in cosmopolitan Paris that Max Band became even more Jewish. His characteristic feature is sadness. Even his flowers bloom sadly. The rain of sadness sprinkles his works, his landscapes, his portraits’ (1939, Review, 24:7). Having mastered the sfumato painting technique (from Italian fumo for ‘fog’, sfumato for ‘disappearing’), whereby colours and tones are so subtly combined that it is difficult to distinguish where one colour or tone changes into another, Band created a particularly melancholic and lyrical mood. Litvak melancholy persisted in the work of artists during the Soviet and post-Soviet periods. The landscape Evening closes by Augustinas Savickas, and works by Adomas Jacovskis, became symbols of sadness.

Text author Vilma Gradinskaitė

Source: Law firm Valiunas Ellex art album THE WORLD OF LANDSCAPES II (2013). Compiler and author Nijolė Tumėnienė, RES PUBLICA (2018). Compiler and author Rūta Janonienė, STORIES OF LITVAK ART (2023). Compiler and author Vilma Gradinskaitė

The skilfully captured and harmonious sight of a turbulent sky as if before a storm, painted from nature in the Plos or Tver province, is distinguished by its nuanced and fluid expression. These were places where Levitan, absorbed in the life and the spirit of nature, painted forests, the vast expanses of Volga riversides, and the banks of streams. A small landscape with a simple theme, perhaps one of the 300 sketches he left after his death, reveals a special mood of philosophical contemplation.

Text author Nijolė Tumėnienė

The landscapes painted in Russia by Isaak Levitan were always shrouded in Litvak melancholy. This feature is also prominent in the work of the interwar Vilnius artists Janusz Trefler and Jakob Szer. Art critics found Max Band’s paintings sombre. The French critic N. Frank wrote: ‘It was in cosmopolitan Paris that Max Band became even more Jewish. His characteristic feature is sadness. Even his flowers bloom sadly. The rain of sadness sprinkles his works, his landscapes, his portraits’ (1939, Review, 24:7). Having mastered the sfumato painting technique (from Italian fumo for ‘fog’, sfumato for ‘disappearing’), whereby colours and tones are so subtly combined that it is difficult to distinguish where one colour or tone changes into another, Band created a particularly melancholic and lyrical mood. Litvak melancholy persisted in the work of artists during the Soviet and post-Soviet periods. The landscape Evening closes by Augustinas Savickas, and works by Adomas Jacovskis, became symbols of sadness.

Text author Vilma Gradinskaitė

Source: Law firm Valiunas Ellex art album THE WORLD OF LANDSCAPES II (2013). Compiler and author Nijolė Tumėnienė, RES PUBLICA (2018). Compiler and author Rūta Janonienė, STORIES OF LITVAK ART (2023). Compiler and author Vilma Gradinskaitė