His letters to his artist friend Vasily Dmitrievich Polenov 1844-1927 are a personal account of many of the key figures in Russian art who exhibited during their lifetime.

He was the second cousin of Aleksandr Ivanovich Herzen (1812–1870), the writer and outstanding public figure; and son to Count Sergei Lvovich Levitsky (1819–1898), one of the founders of photography in Russia and Europe's early photographic pioneers.

Rafail Levitsky was also an art professor and a photographer, noted for his portraits of the ill-fated family of Czar Nicholas II, the last emperor of Russia.

In 1866, Rafail Sergeevich Levitsky began his artistic studies at the Imperial Academy of Arts in Saint Petersburg as a free-student.

It is Chistyakov's teaching methods that combined the best traditions of the academic school and the experience of direct perception of nature that are widely recognized as having led to the development of realism in Russian art.

His career is documented in a report written by request of the Committee of Imperial Society of Honouring Visual Arts by Nickolay Makarenko, published in Saint Petersburg in 1914.

In 1880, Rafail Levitsky joined the free-thinking "Association of Peredvizhniki Artists" who sought to move away from the academic formalism of the official Academy.

Throughout his life Rafail Sergeevich Levitsky was good friends with fellow Itinerant artist Vasily Dmitrievich Polenov.

Polenov's freshness of color combined with artistic finish of composition greatly influenced Levitsky's own landscape painting style and treatment.

When Rafail was a bachelor, he lived and worked together with Polenov in "Devich'e Pole" (the name of the street "Maiden's Field"), in an attic of the Olsufevsky House.

As Rafail Sergeevich Levitsky lived and worked in Saint Petersburg we are given insight into the art exhibitions he attended and wrote about in letters to Vasily Dmitrievich Polenov.

In a letter sent to Polenov in Moscow, Rafail writes about an academic exhibition which occurred on September, 18th, 1869 about the sculptor Opekushin Alexander Mikhailovich (1838–1923) who sculpted a bust of the artist Mikhail Osipovich Mikeshin (1835–1896).

While living there, he once again visited his friend, the landlord, Rafail S. Levitsky, where he fell seriously ill with severe dysentery and remained there for ten days.

With a career that began in the 1840s, working as a daguerreotypist in Germany and Italy; Levitsky's father knew Daguerre personally, and introduced the term ‘light painting’ to Russia.

It was he who designed a bellows camera which significantly improved the process of focusing, and it was he who introduced interchangeable decorative backgrounds, as well as the retouching of negatives to reduce or eliminate technical deficiencies.

Lejeune also operated a studio at 106 Rue de Rivoli associated there with a relative Denis Victor Adolphe Le Jeune from 1867.

Le Jeune was listed as a member of the Société Française de Photographie until 1885 as was Levitsky but the latter is most likely a confusion with the exit date of Lejeune.

Showing in practice that the skillful combination of both natural and artificial light allowed one to create interesting effects, Levitsky's photographs became recognized throughout Europe for their mastery.

Photo cards of this time have the distinctive Levitsky name 'and Son' Russian: Левицкий и сын both written as a signature and printed on their backs.

Compare similar photos of the day where sitters stood as straight as soldiers and looked out at the viewer like a deer caught in the headlights of an oncoming car and one will instantly see why the Levitsky studio was miles ahead of its competitors and why being an artist was so important to the early development of photography.