Isaac Levitan was born in a shtetl of Kibarty, Augustów Governorate in Congress Poland, a part of the Russian Empire (present-day Lithuania) into a poor but educated Jewish family.

In September 1873, Isaac Levitan entered the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture where his older brother Avel had already studied for two years.

[2] Savrasov, who was influenced by painters in the Barbizon school, such as Camille Corot, took students outside to paint en plein air.

During his study in the Moscow School of painting, sculpting and architecture, Levitan befriended Konstantin Korovin, Mikhail Nesterov, architect Fyodor Shekhtel, and the painter Nikolay Chekhov.

Together with Korovin in 1885–1886 he painted scenery for performances of the Private Russian opera of Savva Mamontov, a railroad baron and art patron, who developed an artists' colony 37 miles from Moscow.

In his memoir, Polenov wrote that when the curtain rose for the underwater scene Levitan painted with Victor Vasnetsov for the opera Rusalka the audience applauded.

Chekhov was fond of creating pantomimes for his guests, with Levitan often ridiculed for playing the villain, the victim and the alien Jew, ostensibly all in jest.

During work in Ostankino, he painted fragments of the mansion's house and park, but he was most fond of poetic places in the forest or modest countryside.

Characteristic of his work is a hushed and nearly melancholic reverie amidst pastoral landscapes largely devoid of human presence.

Though his late work displayed familiarity with Impressionism, his palette was generally muted, and his tendencies were more naturalistic and poetic than optical or scientific.

[citation needed] Birch trees, which grow freely in central Russia and are considered a national emblem of spring and renewal,[12] were a common motif in Levitan's work, which he painted in various seasons.

In Spring Flood (1897) the thin curved white trunks, devoid of foliage, are reflected in the floodwaters left by the melting snows from nearby mountains.

In'September Day' (1890s) the group of trees with bright yellow foliage is engulfed with wind, the ground is covered with already rotten leaves, one of the characteristic examples of the influence of Impressionism on artist.

In spite of the effects of a terminal illness (he suffered from a heart condition for much of his life), his last works are increasingly filled with light.

In the 1890s, he had an on-again, off-again affair with an older married woman; the painter Sofia Kuvshinnikova, which led to a small scandal — and a play by Anton Chekhov ("The Grasshopper") and a threatened duel with the playwright.

[18] Isaac Levitan's hugely influential art heritage consists of more than a thousand paintings, among them watercolors, pastels, graphics, and illustrations.

[citation needed] During the year after his death an exhibit of several hundred Levitan paintings was shown in Moscow and then in St. Petersburg.