German publisher Schocken; Russian architect J Berlin

Joseph Berlin (1877-1952) was born in Mogilev Russia/now Belarus. He studied at St Pet­ersburg Academy of Art graduating in 1911, winning sev­eral architectural compet­itions. Berlin then worked in St Pet­er­s­burg, designing 12+ build­ings for various local councils and banks before migrat­ing to British-ruled Palestine with his family in 1921

Once settled, he got work as Chief Architect in the Public Works Dept of the important trade union, the Histadrut. In his 3 years there, he designed a number of build­ings in Tel-Aviv including the Electric Corporation on HaHashmal St, a text­ile fact­ory and a number of private houses eg Sh­ap­ira House in Bialik St which later became a synagogue. In total Berlin designed 100+ buildings around the country, 83 in Tel Aviv, many of them land­marks which still stand today.

Haaretz Tel Aviv, built 1932

architect Joseph Berlin

So why did Joseph Berlin agree to design printing works? Haaretz News­paper was founded in 1918, sponsored by the British military govern­ment in Palest­ine, making it the longest running news­paper currently in print in Isr­ael. Haaretz is considered the most in­fluential and re­sp­ect­ed daily newspaper, Israel's newspaper of record. In 1919, it was led by a group of Russian Labour Zionists and the literary section attract­ed leading Hebrew writers of the time.   

Architect Joseph Berlin

Until 1922 the paper was printed in Jerusalem, then it re­opened in Tel Aviv early 1923 under the editorship of Moshe Glick­son. Tel Aviv Council granted the paper financial support by paying in advance for future advertisements. Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, it was seen as the most sophisticated of the country's dailies.

Apart from the news, Haar­etz publishes feature articles on social and environmental issues, book reviews, investig­ative reporting and pol­it­ical commentary. Its read­ership includes Israel's intelligentsia and members of its political and economic elites. Haar­etz readership has a higher-than-average education and income and most are Ashkenazim.

Salman Schocken (1877-1959) was a publisher and co-founder of the large Kaufhaus Schocken chain of department stores in Germany. His classiest shop was in St­uttgart, designed by famous architect Erich Mendelsohn in 1926. St­raight after the Nazis took over, Schocken left Ger­many and emig­rated to Palestine in 1934; the department stores he left in Germany were quickly ary­anised.

St­uttgart branch, Kaufhaus Schocken chain of German department stores.

Schocken founded Schocken Books, publishing books in German and Hebrew. And fortunately he bought Ha­ar­etz Printing Company in Dec 1937.  

Ha­ar­etz Printing Co, Tel Aviv

renovated in the 1990s

The original Haaretz building was designed in 1932 to the archit­ect­ural designs of Joseph Berlin and his son Zeev. 56 Mazeh St Tel Aviv was com­pletely a residential street at the time when the print works were built. In fact it was surp­rising that permission was granted for a noisy industrial unit that op­erated all night, printing the next day's edition. It was demolished in the early 1990s with only part of the fac­ade pre­ser­v­ed and integ­rated into the modernist building.

Commentators have compared the former print works to the early works of Bauhaus star Walter Gropius and those of Erich Mendel­sohn who designed the de la Warr pavilion in Sussex. It made sense. Berlin was trained in Russia but by the time he was building in Tel Aviv in the 1930s, his projects incorporated many elements of the Bauhaus style i.e few decorative additions, flat roofs, ribbon windows.

Ha'aretz Newspaper left the building years ago but the current owners have kept the original facade, maintaining it excellently. It has strong features, with wide steel framed glass, rounded bal­con­ies and balustrades, and a cantilevered roof. And note the glazed corner stairwell looking into the zigzag staircase, adding drama to the des­ign. Its squared-off corner contrasts with the curves of the rest of the balconies. Look through the door to a repro­duc­ed image of the building back in the 1930's. The only significant diff­erence is that the original image still bore the newspaper name on the facade.

Haaretz is still owned by the Schocken family, now the printing house is in Schocken St Sth Tel Aviv. The glass st­air­case and balcony with rail­ings are striking. The building used to have another structure in the back, which was demolished and replaced by a higher housing building.

In the era of their partnership, Joseph and Zeev Ber­lin des­igned several build­ings in T.A, including Braun-Rabinsky House (1932) cnr Rothschild Bld & Mazeh St. This residential build­ing was designed by the father-and-son team, its design ch­aracterised by straight, unadorned lines. It was designed as a 3-storeyed house with 2 flats on each floor, on either side of a vertical stair­s; this accentuated the corner and funct­ions as the building's axis of sym­metry. See the stairwell and the vertical thermometer window. Since then the pent­house was added to the building, setback from the main façade, while another extension was added at the rear.  

Braun-Rabinsky House, Tel Aviv, 1932

by Joseph and Zeev Berlin architects

Read 1. Baruch Ravid’s book: Josef Berlin, Architect: Between Little Tel Aviv and the White City (2005) and 2. Adrian Yekkes, Josef Berlin in Tel Aviv.

Odessa: cultural architecture protected

Venice’s Teatro San Cassiano became the world's first public opera house in 1637. Soon, in the C17th & C18th, Central European opera houses had to be financed by rulers, nobles and wealthy people who used patronage of the arts for their own grand reputation. So the Russian Opera House in Odessa must have been a wonderful sight in Russia. Officially it was said to be at the intersection of history because it’s between Tchaikovsky Lane and Langeron St, while facing Richelieu St and de Ribas St. Each personality contributed to Odessa’s development. The first opera house, which opened in 1810, burned down in 1873 and reopened in 1887, was in Vienna Baroque style, an immediate city landmark. Performances included opera, ballet and concerts.

Opera House front

Opera House, National Academic Theatre

The National Academic Opera-Ballet Theatre was built in 1884-7 by Viennese architects Ferdinand Fellner & Hermann Helmer. The grand Viennese Baroque style was the first one built in Novorossiysk Port on the Black Sea where electric lighting and central heating were used.

What famous people were associated with the Odessa’s Opera House area? Count Louis Alexandre Andrault de Langeron (1763-1831) was born into a noble Parisian family. He was one of many French émigrés in Russian service, having his first war experience in the America’s War of Independence. He then served at Caracas and Saint Domingo in 1782-3, before being promoted in the French army to Colonel of the Armagnac Regiment in 1788. Langeron joined the Russian Army besieging the Ottoman Fortress of Izmail in 1790. He was awarded a Golden Sword for Courage, and he remained in the Russ-ian service for life. 

Armand du Plessis, 5th Duke of Richelieu (1766-1822) was born in Paris, a royalist who enlisted in the Kingdom of France’s army after the start of the French Revolution (1789). de Richelieu entered the Queen Marie Antoinette's Regiment of Dragoons in the storming of the Versailles Palace (1789). He became an officer of the Russian Imperial Army, and a Duke upon the death of his father in 1791.  He had a deep knowledge of economics and diplomacy, and promoted the role of trade for the nation's wel-fare. Under his regime, the discount bank, exchange, insurance company, customs district, commercial court & quarantine facility proudly grew. [The Duc's father had been a representative of the Kingdom of Spain to the Kingdom of Naples until 1816 and then an officer in the Russian Imperial Army 1772].

This may have helped him get appointed Governor of Odessa (1803-14). In Richelieu's governorship, he received royal permission to establish locally funded educational institutions in Odessa. de Richelieu's greatest claim to fame was establishing the  Richelieu Lyceum in Odessa in 1817, located on the corner of modern Langeron and de Ribas Sts.  Richelieu was supported by the newly created Ministry of Education (1802) and the National Educational Statutes (1803). In 1804 2 educational institutions were founded as Richelieu Lyceum in 1817, was a private institution of learning where the students were drawn primarily from the aristocracy and wealthy merchant families. Richelieu Lyceum became an institution of higher education and basis for today’s Odessa National Uni. 

French was the only academic language until 1820, when Russian lecturers joined the Lyceum and taught in Russian. Duc de Richelieu was the Governor of Odessa (1803-14), dying from cholera in 1831, and buried in Odessa’s Catholic Cathedral of the Blessed Virgin. 

He returned to France as a peer in the Bourbon Restoration (1814-30). Odessa became part of Ukraine in 1920 when the Red Army integrated it into the Ukrainian SSR in the Soviet Union. And the Odessa Opera House was encircled by historically significant sites. The Auditorium was decorated in the playful late French Rococo. The ceiling, painted by Franz Leffler & restored by Mikhail Zandin after 1925 fire, was divided into 4 segments: medallions from Shakespeare's Hamlet, Midsummer Night's Dream, Winter's Tale and Twelfth Night. In the centre the large chandelier was beautiful.

The Opera House in Odessa endorsed their political, educational and cultural ambition, and social position. Walk down Richelieu St and see the gorgeous front view of The Opera House, then de Ribas St and Tchaikovsky Lane, and the façade faces Langeron St. José de Ribas was Governor of Odessa (1794-7), José de Ribas (1749-1800), Louis de Langeron (1763-1831) and Duc de Richelieu (1766-1822) were political leaders of late C18th and early C19th.

Holy Assumption Cathedral

The area surrounding the Odessa Opera and Ballet Theatre is rich in cultural institutions, protected by UNESCO. National Scientific Library (1829) in Pasteur St was the first public library in Ukraine. Its opening marked the beginning of the foundation of public libraries in all cities of Russian Empire. Today it is the leading socio-cultural centre in Ukraine and the research, methodological and coord-ination centre on library science, bibliography and document management. And see Odessa Literary Museum, Odessa Philharmonic and Musical Comedy Theatre. 

The area also features other cultural heritage sites, although some were recently attacked. Holy Assumption Cathedral in Odessa, founded in 1855 is one of the largest churches in southern Ukraine. From 1936 on it was the cathedral church of the Odessa diocese. It was consecrated by the ​​Archbishop of Kherson and Odessa. The 2-storey church was built at the expense of the merchants Jacob and Nikolai Cherepennikovs according to the project of the architect L. Otton. The height of the temple together with the bell tower is 56 m and the capacity is 5-6 thousand parishioners.

The temple consists of two sections: upper and lower, with three altars in each. The lower church was consecrated in the name of St. Nicholas, its southern chapel in the name of three Saints: St. Basil the Great, St. Gregory the Theologian and St. John Chrysostom.

Odessa National Research Library was the second public library in Russian Empire, founded in1829. Five millions books, periodicals, documents. This museum of old books is an architectural monument in its own right.

National Research Library

Medical University Library

Archaeology Museum

Stolyarsky Music Lyceum

rebuilt after WW2 bombing

Wiki

The stage door to the Opera House in Odessa is on Tchaikovsky Lane. The service entrance is at the back of the opera house. Pyotr Tchaikovsky was born into a Russian noble family (1840-93) composed first symphonic piece, an overture for Aleksandr Ostrovsky’s (1823-1886) drama, The Storm, which many critics considered to be his best symphony (1877-8) premiere of final opera Iolanthe (1892) visited and performed as conductor of his works in Odessa (1893). He died in St Petersburg.

A half of my family lived next to Odessa, but I promise I will never claim these cultural treasures for my grandchildren :)

Triangle Shirt Fact­ory NY fire tragedy 1911.

Shirtwaist designs, The Modern Priscilla Needlework Magazine, 1906

5 Minute History

Russians Max Blanck and Isaac Harris immigrated to the U.S in the early 1890s and, like hundreds of thousands of other impoverish­ed Jew­ish im­migrants, they began working in the garment industry in sweat­shops. Har­ris became familiar with popular fashion designs while Blanck became a garment contractor. They made a partner­ship, founding the Triangle Waist Co in 1900. In time, The Triangle Shirt­waist Fact­ory was located in the top 3 floors of the Asch Building in Manhattan. They hired 500 work­ers, mostly female Jewish and Italian immigrants, half of them teens. It was a true sweat­shop; the immigrants worked in a cramped space at lines of sewing machines for 12 hours a day. These young women worked 6-7 days a week for tiny wages and little ventilation. The male owners gave male workers the higher-paid jobs, ass­uming women were less skilled.

In 1909, the USA was advancing towards greater mass production and in­creasingly dangerous working conditions. That year the Uprising of 20,000 Strike was organised mainly by Yiddish-speaking garment workers female due to their horrid conditions, long hours and low wages. Their primary motive was to get attention paid to the mist­r­eat­­ment of imm­igrant work­ers. While there were short term agreements to meet their dem­ands, the strike ultimately failed. How­ever it DID succeed some­what in exposing poor working conditions. Progressives and unionists cal­l­ed for different reforms, but Tammany Hall opposed them; the polit­ical machine stalled any legislation that might have benefitted the workers.

Fire danger in factories was common, but corruption in both the industry and city government generally ensured that few useful precautions were taken. The Triangle factory was burned in 1907 and in 1910, the owners appar­ently torching their own work­places before business hours in order to collect on the large fire-insurance policies they purchased, a not unknown practice in the early C20th. While this did not cause the 1911 fire, it contr­ibuted to the tragedy, as Blanck & Harris refused to install sprinkler systems.

Women workers pre-fire

Barbara's Bookstore

 

In 1911 Triangle Shirt­waist Fact­ory had 4 elevators accessing the fact­ory floors, but only one was fully operational and the workers had to go along a narrow corridor to reach it. There were two stairways down to the street, but they were locked from the outside to prevent the workers steal­ing.

The fire escape was so narrow, it would have taken hours for all the workers to use it, even if it had not burned down.

In Mar 1911, there were 600 workers at the Triangle Shirtwaist Fact­ory when a fire began in a material bin. The manager tried using the fire hose to extin­guish it, but the hose was rotted and its valve rust­ed shut. The fire spread and panic ensued. The young workers tried to exit the building by the elevator but it only held 12 people and the operator could only make four trips before it stopped in flames. Young women bec­ame trapped by bulky equipment as flames enveloped the 8th, 9th and 10th floors of the Asch Building. As people struggled to escape, sev­eral fell into the flames, their bodies piling by blocked exits. In a desper­ate at­tempt to escape, the girls still waiting for the elev­ator plunged down the shaft to their deaths. The girls who fled via the stairwells found the locked door at the bottom of the stairs, and were burned alive.

Fire­fighters arrived & saw their lad­ders reached only 7 floors high but the fire was on the 8th floor. So the girls who did not make it to the stairwells or elevator were trapped by the fire inside the fact­ory; they began jumping from the wind­ows to es­cape and died on the conc­rete below. Within 20 mins they found 49 workers burned to death, 36 died in the elevator shaft, 58 died from jumping from the 8th floor and 3 more died in hospital. 146 people were killed altogether.

The International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union had fought for better working con­dit­ions for all sweatshop workers. The union didn’t gain real attention until after the Triangle Waist Co owners were indicted for first degree manslaughter, but were found to be not guilty by the grand jury. To settle lawsuits against them, the owners DID pay $75 in compen­sat­ion to each victim’s family, a frac­t­ion of the $400 per death that they were paid by their insurer.

Nonetheless the tragedy led to the growth of a series of laws and regu­l­ations that better protected work-ers’ safety. The fire unified organised labour and reforming polit­icians like NY Gov Alfred Smith  and Sen Ro­b­­ert Wagner, a le­g­isl­ator in Pres Franklin D Roosevelt’s (1933–45) New Deal  agenda. And the Factory Investig­ating Comm­ission in N.Y was set up af­t­er the fire. The workers union set up a march on 5th Ave NY to prot­est the conditions that had led to the fire, attended by 80,000 people.

The huge death toll for which they were responsible DID finally compel the city to enact reform. The Fire Prevention Law passed, and N.Y Democrats took up the workers’ cause; both were crucial in lim­iting similar disasters in the future.

Desperate women threw themselves down from the 8th storey to death

New York Herald

March 1911

Conclusion 

In this era, progressive movements sought to red­uce the impacts of the deplorable working conditions brought by industr­ial­­is­ation and inequality between rich and poor. The 1911 day became the deadliest indust­rial disas­ter in Manhattan history, when 123 women and 23 men died. Workers, union leaders, progressive reformers and political lead­ers all begged for higher environmental standards fitting for US. The Triangle Factory fire DID help create laws for a better workplace to keep employ­ees safer, but at an unthinkable cost for the immigrant families.

Chaim Soutine, great artist but disturbed?

Portrait of a Young Woman, 1915

Wiki

Pastry Cook of Cagnes, 1922 

The Guardian

Grotesque self portrait, c1923

Musée d'Art Moderne de Paris.

Thanks to George Prochnik for this review. From 1913, to get from Smilovichi, a shtetl in Belarus, to Paris. 20 year old artist Chaim Soutine (1893-1943) made many visits to the Louvre to study the canvas. In the mid-1920s he decided to translate it into his own idiom: a huge impasto, churning with deep, febrile colours. Where Rembrandt’s hanging carcass was mottled with pale tones once the blood has drained away, Soutine’s reds appear to be fermenting. It’s not a picture of mortality! Interpreters of Rembrandt’s ox often place it in a memento mori, but Soutine’s picture convulses with what is happening right now.

Soutine insisted that he could only depict a subject if he had it in front of him, and various accounts of how he managed this with a huge quarter-side of beef came down to us. In her passionate biography, Celeste Marcus shares the most lurid. After hauling the carcass from the slaughterhouse to his studio in darkness, Soutine set to work painting it, but after a few days it began to go green and give off a terrible stench. He returned to the abattoir to get a bucket of blood so that he could keep the colours vibrant. But the blood dripped through the floorboards into the apartment below. The street was aghast. The official sanitation squad paid him a visit to shut down the project, but Soutine’s assistant prevailed on them to let him finish the work, whereupon they relented and showed him how to inject the meat with ammonia to preserve it. Soutine was also busy painting dead ducks, turkeys and chickens! The smaller bodies still stank making him a troublesome neighbour, but Soutine’s devotion to his work kept complaints to a minimum. 

Much death went into making Soutine’s art. Yet it is Marcus’ argument that everything Soutine does on the canvas should be understood as part of the artist’s pursuit of life. His canvases bear witness to his epic struggle for self-mastery, discipline and skill to communicate satisfactorily the energy of life itself. Plus many of his landscapes appear deliquescent, while the figures and faces of his human subjects are contortions. He shows us scenes in which our perspectives on life and painting have become unstuck, inverting his subject matter inside out. 

In an important 1963 essay on Soutine, critic David Sylvester noted the painter’s debt to Cézanne. Sylvester describes how Soutine’s endeavour recalls Cézanne’s determination to take hold of volume in its full tactile reality and beat it, as it were, into the picture-plane. Both artists aspired to re-create – which meant capturing the swing between broad, organic continuity and individual ephemerality. 

Marcus recognises the pitfalls of writing a biography about an artist who made so few personal statements, and for an understanding of whose formative experiences we are forced to rely on sketchy anecdotes supplied by those who knew the painter – or had heard the stories first-hand. She makes good use of this material, however, especially in her account of how Soutine left behind his constricted youth in an orthodox eastern European Jewish village for bohemian Paris. Here he lived a destitute, industrious, essentially monastic life for many years, despite soon earning the esteem of his peers in Montparnasse, among them Modigliani. 

Then c1922 collector Albert Barnes encountered Soutine’s work, seized on the artist as a star-in-waiting and bought 50+ paintings in one go, liberating Soutine from the struggle for survival, until the rise of Fascism stripped his life of all security once more. Soutine spent his last years moving from flat to flat, trying to keep out of sight. He relentlessly worked, but his health deteriorated. Medical care for the stomach problems that probably began with youthful malnutrition became more challenging under the new political realities, leaving him more vulnerable until, in 1943, he died of a perforated ulcer.

Marcus fills out this chronicle with mini-biographies of some of Soutine’s intimates, including Gerda Michaelis, the German-Jewish refugee who in 1937 became Soutine’s partner and one serious love affair. Conceptually however the author honours the position articulated by Hilton Kramer, that the painter had no biography outside his art; one might even say that his art was a substitute for a biography. She scoffs at those who insist he left no traces: he is there, right before our eyes. The man was his art, and his paintings bellow from the walls on which they hang. This is a legitimate position to take, but it is somewhat surprising to confront the confidence with which Marcus pronounces on what this bellowing is communicating.

Plucked Goose c1933,

Artists Rights Society, New York

 Carcass of Beef, 1924

The New Yorker

Marcus wants to rescue Soutine from critics who ascribe his work's emotional content  to traumatic Jewish experience. To consider this view of his art, she takes a formalist approach making Soutine’s evolution an almost exclusively interior, technical development. Marcus has enlightening things to say about the increasing strength of Soutine’s style, some informed by her own paintings. Yet it’s unclear what is gained by trying to draw so strict a line between the historical & personal. World horrors can penetrate even the most focused creative consciousness. Nor did Soutine try to keep his head down as evidence for Hitler’s designs on Europe were mounting.

The firewall Marcus puts up between Soutine’s subjection to history and his creative genius leads her to minimise the ways in which his first 20 years might have shaped his sensibility. There are conflicting ideas about how miserable Soutine was in the shtetl. He seems to have found the country beautiful and the markets lively, but he suffered poverty & physical abuse. Some versions of his story indicate that he was beaten by his brothers, perhaps for making art, and received at least one significant beating from others for painting an old man in the community, although accounts differ about whether a violation of Jewish law was the issue. Once he left the Pale of Settlement there is no outward indication that Soutine ever looked back. But the experience ?continued to gnaw at him.

Given the bias against visual culture within Orthodox Judaism, it is perfectly plausible to view his art as a reaction against it.  Many of his paintings do seem to demand that we look when others turn away – and to stare hard.  Soutine said When I painted the beef carcass it was still this cry that I wanted to liberate. I have still not succeeded. Francis Bacon, who acknowledged the fertile shock produced by his encounter with Soutine’s work, and whose homage to Rembrandt’s ox seems more indebted to Soutine than to the Old Master, made the screaming mouth a leitmotif, even in the absence of a visual cue.

John Ashbery found Soutine’s MOMA show in 1950 a heady revelation that increased his sense of possibility as a writer: the fact that the sky could come crashing joyously into the grass, that trees could dance upside down and houses roll over like cats … I began pushing my own poems around. It’s a topsy-turvy scene but there is danger pulsing beneath that fallen sky. Writer Maurice Sachs, who met Soutine some times in the early 1930s, said he painted in a state of lyrical panic. He slashed his canvases and destroyed them when he felt they'd failed. Surely he was addressing a dilemma with historical and political dimensions; what Freud described as the perpetual agon between humanity’s life and death drives. Freud saw the future of civilisation as dependent on the life urge prevailing, but already by 1930 the prospects of that outcome were dwindling. Chaim Soutine died in 1943.

Good looking and young, even towards the end of his life

wiki

I Helen know that there was never a formal diagnosis from a psychiatrist to suggest the Expressionist painter Soutine was psychotic, even though his turbulent life and distorted paintings strongly suggested his mental state wasn't normal. If anything Soutine was a painter of his own obsessions, probably due to family rejection, exile, extreme poverty, physical illness and Nazi terror. I am on Hilton Kramer's side: Soutine's life was a harrowing tale of impossible aspirations,  unappeasable emotions and impossible appetites, not handled except perhaps through Expressionism.

Read Chaim Soutine: Genius, Obsession, and a Dramatic Life in Art By Celeste Marcus

Latvian shoot-up London 1910-1

Few places in the world were as infamous for murders as the East End of London. Jack the Ripper, The Krays and 1811 Ratcliffe Highway murders were all frightening. But the Latvians threatening London’s East End were UNexpected. They arrived from the Russian Empire against an intense debate about the large numbers of struggling immigrants from Eastern Europe.

Matching the earlier horrors were 2 events in Dec 1910-Jan 1911. Houndsditch is a mainroad running from Bishopsgate to Aldgate High St. Located at 120 Houndsditch was an import business run by Max Weil. In mid Dec 1910 Weil arrived at #120 to find his sister and housemaid in a state of agitation. They heard noises coming from the jeweller’s shop next door, as if someone was breaking at the rear.

Latvian revolutionaries aka Leesma weren't revolutionaries; later research found the c13 members carried out robberies to fund Lenin and his Bolsheviks.

Home Secretary Churchill, watching the Siege close up

Wiki

#119 backed onto a flat at 11 Exchange Buildings. Weil alerted the police of a likely break-in to the Exchange Buildings jewellers. He returned with Constable Piper who knocked on #11’s door. Piper had a brief talk with the man who answered the door and then left to summon help. Fritz Svaars & Josef Sokoloff were from Latvia in the Russian Empire. They’d fled the country after a failed attempt to overthrow the Tsar in 1905. Robbing jewellers was to raise funds for their cause.

Cons. Piper returned with 3 sergeants and 5 constables. Sgt Bentley hit on the door which was answered by the same man who had spoken to Piper. After another brief talk, the man tried to shut the door in Bentley’s face. However the sergeant pushed his way into #11 and chaos erupted. Bentley received two gunshots in the neck. He staggered back through the doorway and died. Standing behind him, Sgt Bryant now saw the gun being turned on him, hitting him in the chest. Constable Woodhams ran to his assistance only to fall to a bullet in the thigh. Both Bryant and Woodhams survived their wounds but were invalided out of the police force. Sgt Tucker was shot in the heart by a man in doorway #11 and died. The killer ran from the building, followed by other men and a woman. As they fled, Cons. Walter Choat jumped out of the darkness at them, grabbing an escapee who fired bullets into his leg. A gang-member came behind Choat and shot 2 bullets in his back. Choat fell.

Murdered police officers, 

London Museum

The gangster who’d been shot by his own cohorts was found dead in his room a day later. George Gardstein had been the de facto leader of the gang of Latvian revolutionaries in Leesma! After Russia’s revolution, one Leesma member Jacob Peters was 2nd in command of Cheka, the feared Bolshevik secret police. Perhaps Latvian Peters had killed Englishmen Bentley, Tucker & Choat, and injured Bryant.

Metropolitan & City Police launched an operation to hunt down the surviving revolutionaries and by that year Peters & others were caught. In Jan 1911 a figure slipped at night into London City’s police headquarters in Old Jewry. Although not officially identified he was perhaps Charles Perelman, former landlord to some Leesma members. Perelman had important information: Svaars & Sokoloff were hiding in a 2nd floor room in Sidney St, armed with Mauser pistols.

On 3rd Jan a file of police officers wound through the silent East End to Sidney St, from Commercial Rd to the northern junction of Whitechapel and Mile End Rds. The officers hadn’t been told about the mission, but they knew that it was dangerous; married policemen were excluded! Some were armed but their weapons were antique, as compared to the powerful hand-guns the Latvians carried. On getting to Sidney St, the police evacuated the first two floors of #100 and by daybreak the stage was set.

Svaara & Sokoloff were soon alerted to their danger. The front door was banged and stones were hurled at the revolutionaries’ window. They answered with some shots. Det Sarg Leeson fell gravely wounded but like Bryant & Woodhams, he survived. Battle commenced, and despite being so heavily outnumbered, it was Svaars and Sokoloff who won the firefight. Equipped with rugged handguns, they easily beat the police’s inferior weapons.

Hours passed, so the police appealed to Scotland Yard for assistance and they in turn sought help. Home Secretary Winston Churchill permitted the army to respond and soon 20 Scots Guards arrived, changing the situation. And the fire brigade arrived, to prevent fire from spreading.

Firing line of Scots Guards. Sidney Street Siege

gravelroots

Now the soldiers elevated their efforts, shooting into #100’s windows. Sokoloff peered at the maelstrom but the burning house collapsed. The ceiling killed him, ending Sidney St’s siege. And one more death. On entering #100 District Fire Officer Charles Pearson was hit by falling masonry, severing his spine and dying 6 months later. A honour plaque to the dead first responders was unveiled there much later.

Detectives inspect the 100 Sidney St house, post-siege

Gravelroots

Other Latvian anarchists, Jacob Peters, Yourka Dubof, John Rosen & Nina Vassileve were tried for the Houndsditch murders in the East End but 3 of them were acquitted. Only Vassileve was found guilty of a minor offence, later quashed. Gardstein, Svaars and Sokoloff were “probably guilty”.

The police soon tracked other revolutionaries, offering rewards for the capture of named suspects. Well covered by the press and captured on newsreels, the Siege also had lasting impacts for the scared communities living in the East End’s early C20th: political refugees, socialists & ex-Eastern European Jews, including my Russian Jewish grandmother.

Read Devilish Kind of Courage: Anarchists, Aliens and the Siege of Sidney St, 2024, by Andrew Whitehead 

Picnics from noble feasts to rural relaxing

Picnics were the very epitome of innocent pastoral delight, but allow Alexander Lee to give us the history of this form of fun. Then I will add my own histories.

The French root of picnic may derive from piquer/to peck and nique/small amount. The word first appeared in 1649, a burlesque satire on Fronde hypocrisy, an insurrection chal­l­enging French absolutism. Ironically the main character, Pique-Nique, was a guzzling millitary hero.

In any case, it caught the imagin­ation of Paris’ beau monde and soon lost any pejorative assoc­iations. As Gilles Ménage’s Dictionnaire (1694) showed, a pique-nique had become a fashionable dinner, to which each guest contributed.

Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe, 
Édouard Manet, 1863 
Pushkin Museum, Moscow. 

Picnics really started to come into their own during the C18th. A favourite pastime of the aristocracy, they were indoor affairs, held at home or in hired rooms. They were contrasted with the elab­orate fêtes champêtres depicted by Antoine Watteau etc. Att­end­ees could either bring a dish or drink, OR pay a share of the cost.

Like cultural salons, picnics were linked to intellectual refinement. Typical was Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who, while rewriting the first act of Les Muses galantes in Paris, would often dine with the Abbé de Condillac ‘tête à tête en pique-nique’. At larger gatherings, there was also music or a dance, just like a party.

The French Revolution changed everything. Many aristocrats fled abroad to Austria, Prussia or America; but more chose Britain. Settling prim­arily in London without much money, they did their best to maintain their old lifestyle. But in London, the picnic became more raucous, thanks to a group of 200 wealthy young Francophiles, who founded the Pic Nic Society in late 1801. Held in hired rooms in Tottenham St, their gatherings were extravagant. Every member was required to bring a dish and six bottles of wine, and each strove to outdo the others in luxury. After dinner there was singing, dancing and gambling; but the key entertainment was always an amateur play.

Before long journalist-politician  Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1751–1816) , owner of Drury Lane Theatre, was alarmed at losing business to the Pic Nics. Sheridan used his influence to have the Pic Nics shut down; but not before the caricaturist James Gill­ray had ridiculed the lot of them in 1802.

Just as Sheridan was becoming furious in London, picnics were taken up by the emergent middle classes and moved outdoors. Why? Possibly the socially asp­irat­ional applied a fash­ion­ab­le French word to a pre-existing prac­t­ice, without being aware of its connotations. Anyhow picnicking ceased to be associated with music-dancing and became a simple, hosted meal. And thanks to the ideal­is­ation of the countryside, the event became more innocent.

The earliest reference appeared in John Harris' The Court­ship, Merry Marriage and Pic Nic Dinner of Cock Robin and Jenny Wren (1806), a children’s book. But such was its popularity that it soon found its way into literary works. In 1808, writer Dorothy Word­sworth picnicked with others on Gras­mere Island. In Emma (1816) Jane Austen gave a vivid port­rait of a rustic picnic on Box Hill.

James Tissot 
Holyday, aka The Picnic, c1876. 
Tate Gallery 

In the Victorian era, picnics were grand affairs! In 1861, a definitive list of upper class Victorian picnic fare appeared in Mrs Beeton's Book of Household Manage­ment. One couldn't eat outdoors without tables, linens, crystal and servants!

The development of new modes of transport (trains, cars, bikes) and the acceleration of social change made the country­ accessible to a greater proportion of the population. Be­fore long, their popularity had grown so much that picnic baskets were being produced for the mass market eg Kenneth Grahame’s Wind in the Willows (1908).

Though restoration of the French monarchy accompanied the ret­urn of picnicking to French aristocracy, the indoor version prev­ail­ed. When outdoor picnics eventually gained ground in France, they were regarded with sus­pic­ion. Perhaps because of a growing reaction against the Romantic ideal­is­ation of nature, they were not seen as innocent and whole­some. But as decadent. This was most ev­ident in Édouard Manet’s Le Dé­jeuner sur l’herbe (1862-3), depict­ing one naked and one scantily clad woman, picnick­ing with two fully dressed men.

As the outdoor picnic found its way to the USA, it remained a gent­eel pursuit of the urban middle classes. But unlike in Britain, its bucolic setting was associated more with a flight from civilisation than with childlike simplicity. Though still tinged with innocence, depictions of American picnics eg by Thomas Cole and Winslow Homer, tended to be craggier.

Pierre-August Renoir's 
Luncheon of the Boating Party, 1881 
The Phillips Collection, Washington DC 

Now allow me to add important possibilities that had noth­ing to do with France. People have been eating outside since the beginning of time. The outdoor affair was like a lucky-dip meal; a group of people got together, each contributing to the meal. Cons­id­er Robin Hood and his Merry Men who informally dined outside on bread, cheese and ale. And during the C14th, the earliest picnics were mediev­al hunting feasts in England. These pre-hunt feasts were important, specialising in hams, baked meats and pastries.

Now consider that outdoor summer meals were very popular in countries with long, cold winters. The concept of a picnic was known in Russia, Ger­­many and Sweden be­f­ore it became part of English soc­iety. Russians loved holding picnics, partially because sunny weather was a rare delight to be treas­ured. Anton Chekhov (1860-1904) cited the experience in a number of his stor­ies, usually along a river or beach. The Romanovs had elab­orate feasts that richly fed dozens of people; my grandmother had Friday night left-overs, just for the immediate family.

Picnic at Freshwater NSW,  1895, centred around cricket
photographer Arthur Phillips
Collection: Powerhouse Museum

But in Australia, the hottest, most outdoorsy time of year was al­ways Christmas to New Year, when workers were given paid hol­idays and schools were closed. See the Australian picnic with young men and women: cricket stumps and bat were visible, as were the billy and picnic hamper. Kitchen items eg cheap versions of cups, plates and picnic cases, were ad­ver­tised in the catalogues of turn-of-the-century shops eg Anthony Hordens and later David Jones.

School girls enjoying a picnic at Hanging Rock

set in 1900 in Macedon Ranges Vic
Forward

Joan Lindsay’s Picnic at Hanging Rock (1967) was one of Australia’s most famous books and films. The teenage girls came from a classy private boarding school in the City.

Russian Grand Duchess Anna Anderson?

Romanov family with Grand Duchess Anastasia seated far right.
Credit: Ati

In July 1918 Bolshevik revolutionaries shot Czar Nicholas II, Czarina Alexandra, four Grand Duch­esses Olga, Tatiana, Maria, Anastasia, son Tsarevich Alex­ei and 4 servants. Their bodies were taken from the Yekaterinburg cellar in the Urals, and buried in the forest, yet rumours started that the body of the Grand Duchess Anastasia had not been accounted for. Did she hide in the closed cellar?

Since 1918 many women called them­selves Missing Anast­asia. But only two women gathered subs­tant­ial support. See an earlier post about Anna Anderson and the other pretenders.

The princesses Olga, Tatiana, Maria and Anastasia

Alexander Palace, 1916

Anna Anderson was suicidal and was sent to Dall­dorf Mental Asylum in Berlin in 1920. One of the pat­ients believed Anna was the Grand Duchess and two years later Anna also started believing the story. So the Czarina of Russia’s brother, Ernest Louis Grand Duke of Hesse, hired private investigator Martin Knopf in 1927 to discover who she really was.

He found she was Franziska Schanzkowska, who’d worked in a munitions factory in WW1. After her fiancé was killed at the front, a grenade fell out of her hand and exploded. She had head in­juries and a foreman was killed in front of her.

In 1928 she moved to USA and liv­ed off Rus­sian Princess Xenia Georgievna, a distant rel­ative of the Romanovs. But Anna had to return to Germany. For 20 years she struggled to get her name recognised by the Eur­op­ean courts.. and failed. In 1968 she moved back to the USA wh­ere she married a wealthy man. And­ers­on died in the USA in 1984.

More recent events Canonisation of the dead Romanovs in Nov 1981 told the world the Orthodox Church made them saints. This was based on the bel­ief that all the ro­y­al family were all totally, irrev­oc­ab­ly murdered.

The bodies of Tsar, Tasarina and 3 of the daughters were found in the woods outside Yekaterinburg in 1991. Exhaustive post mortem exam­in­ations con­firm­ed that the bodies were indeed the Romanovs, so they were quickly was buried in a vault in Saints Peter & Paul Cathed­ral, St Petersburg. But this did not end the rumours because the son and one of the 4 daugh­t­­ers might still have been alive.

Questions remained: had Grand Duchess Anastasia really es­c­aped from Russia and later resurfaced as Anna Anderson? Tissue samples were kept after And­ers­on died, so plans could fin­ally made for post-mortem DNA tests. In 1994 DNA tests on a lock of Anna's hair and sur­v­iving med­ic­al tissue samples sh­owed that her DNA did NOT match any Romanov rem­ains.

Anastasia, c1914                                                                            Anna Anderson, c1917

Ati                                                                                                   Ati 

This claim was investigated by com­paring Anna’s DNA with DNA ext­racted from the Ro­m­­anov bones. Mat­ernally inherited mitochondrial DNA, which is pass­­ed un­ch­anged from mother to child, was analysed from each of the samples. If Anna had really been Anastasia, her mitoch­ond­rial DNA should have been a perfect match to her mother’s and sister’s DNA. As most historians ex­pected, multiple diff­erences were detected between Anna’s DNA prof­ile and the DNA profile of her mother and sisters. Anna Anderson was just an imposter!

So who WAS Anna Anderson? Instead Ander­son's mitochondrial DNA was compared to that of Carl Maucher, a great-nephew of Franz­iska Schanz­kowska via the maternal line. The DNA profiles from Anderson and Mau­ch­er were a close match, provid­ing strong evidence that Anna And­er­son was indeed Franzisca Schanz­kow­ska. We may never know the rea­s­ons she claimed to be a Romanov, but perhaps her mental illness led her to believe that she truly was a Grand Duchess.

Unexpectedly, in 2007, the 4th daughter and the son were found cremated near Yek­ater­in­burg. It was never verif­ied if the 4th sister was Maria or Anastasia, but ALL 4 girls had been proven by DNA testing to be part of the royal family.

Her story has been adapted into plays, cartoons and films includ­ing the film Anastasia (1956) that earned Ingrid Bergman an Oscar for her role as the Romanov princess. And the award-winning film Anastasia: The Myst­ery of Anna (1986). But remember that the DNA tests from the above studies had not been carried out before the plays and films were made. The true DNA profile of Anna Anderson had not been confirmed, or denied, before 1994.

Thanks to allthatsintersting. 

 

Margot Fonteyn: ballet star, sex, politics

Born Margaret Hookham (1919–91) in Surrey, she showed early promise at ballet which her mother encouraged. Margot's fath­er worked for The British American Tobacco Co., so the family moved to Sh­anghai. Her mother brought her back to London when she was 14 to pursue ballet, and once she chose to abandon school comp­letely, she chose Mar­got Fonteyn for more re­fined, professional name. 

Helpmann and Fonteyn

Façade 1936, Wiki

In 1934 she joined Sad­ler’s Wells Sch­ool. When Alicia Markova left the Co. in 1935, Fonteyn took her roles and developed a fine partnership with Aus­tralian dancer-choreo­grapher Robert Hel­pmann into the 40s. The Help­mann part­ner­ship helped to dev­elop her theat­ric­al­­ity.

Inspired by a Markova performance in Les Syl­ph­ides, Margot devoted herself to ballet full time. Sadler's Wells Director Ninette de Val­ois spotted the lass and gave her the pr­in­cipal roles in Giselle, Swan Lake and Sleeping Beauty.

Although Fonteyn’s dancing seemed very innocent, she apparently had many lovers. Her affair with the married older cond­uctor Const­ant Lambert was problematic, due to his alcohol and women. And when Mar­got visited Cambridge Uni in 1937, she met Roberto Tito Arias (1918–89). The young law stud­ent from Panama fasc­in­ated her, so the pair enjoyed spending time to­get­her for the week. But when he return­ed to Panama, they ceased com­mun­ication.

 Throughout WW2, Margot danced nightly and sometimes daily, to ent­ert­ain troops. In Sep 1940, as the London Blitz began, Sad­l­er's Wells Theatre was turned into an air raid shel­t­er. The Co. was temp­orarily displaced, so in 1940 they went on tour to Eur­ope, start­ing in Hol­land which was full of Germans. When the bombing started, the dancers had to be rescued by a car­go boat.

In 1946 the Co. moved to the Royal Opera House at Covent Garden. One of Fonteyn's best roles was Aurora in Tchaik­ovsky's Sleeping Beauty, the bal­let that became a signature production for the Co. and a major role for Fonteyn. Reprising Aurora in 1949 when the Royal Ballet tour­ed the U.S, Fonteyn instantly became a celebrity with Americans.

On another American tour in 1953, Fonteyn re-met Tito Arias when he surprised her, after seeing Sleeping Beauty. Arias was now a pol­it­ic­ian and Panamanian delegate to the United Nations. Although he had a wife and 3 children, Arias win­ed and dined her, and bought her fur coats. She re­sisted, but in 1955 they married in Paris!

Arias and Margot, 1965

whosdatedwho

 Fonteyn became Pres­ of the Royal Academy of Dance, and was made a Dame of the British Empire in 1956. Tito had been appointed an amb­assador to the Court of St James, so Fonteyn also fulfilled a dip­l­omat's wife duties. In 1956 she was critic­ised for performing in racist Johannes­burg, and she and Tito were also criticised for be­friending Imelda Mar­c­os & Nor­iega. Was it to help Tito in his schemes to obtain power in Panama? She did believed her husband would become head of Panama, and that she would the Queen.

In April 1959, Arias staged a failed coup d'état again­st Panama’s President Ernesto de la Guardia, ? with the support of Fidel Castro. Fonteyn said the plot was hat­ch­ed in Cuba in Jan 1959, with Cas­t­ro promis­ing to assist Arias with arms or men. During a sea voyage, Arias jumped ship while Font­eyn used her own yacht, to divert the government forces. She returned to Panama City to turn herself in, and meeting at the prison with the British ambassador to Panama, she confes­s­ed her involve­ment. While the Bri­t­­ish Foreign Office got her to NY, Arias hid in Brasil’s Panama embassy and got safely to Peru.

As a retreat from London, the couple bought a house Taplow Bucks

in the 1950s, Daily Mail Aus

Just when she might have retired, Fonteyn began her greatest artistic partnership. In 1961 Kirov Ballet star Rudolf Nureyev defect­ed in Paris and was invited to join the Royal Ballet. Fonteyn was given the opportunity to dance with him in his debut, but she was reluctant be­cause of the age gap. They first performed together in Gis­elle in Feb 1962 where Fonteyn dis­covered new energy, and thus the par­tner­­ship late in her car­­eer won them both worldwide fame. Her per­f­­ect line and lyricism were qualities evident in the roles created by Sir Frederick Ash­ton eg Ondine, Cind­er­ella, Chloë. Ashton created Marguerite and Arm­and for Nureyev and Font­eyn in 1963, a signature piece.

Nureyev said that they were lovers; Fonteyn said not. Nonetheless Margot wanted to divorce her fickle husband Arias in 1964, so she was happy to tour with Nureyev and The Australian Ballet in Stuttgart. Alas Margot learned that a Panam­anian politician had shot Arias. Fonteyn, though shaken, still dan­ced before going to Panama.

This was lucky because, despite planned retirement in her 40s, Arias was now quadriplegic and Margot had to keep earning. Luck­ily her part­ner­ship with Nureyev gave her a new lease of life and pro­longed her career by 18 years.

Fonteyn went into semi-retirement in 1972 with one-act per­f­ormances and she also mov­ed into modern ballet, dancing in 1975 with the Chi­c­­ago Ballet. She fully retired in 1979! For her 60th birthday, Fonteyn was feted by the Royal Ballet, dancing a duet with Ashton and a tango with Helpmann.

Fonteyn and Nureyev 

Pinterest

 In 1989, before Arias’ death, Font­eyn was diag­nosed with ovarian cancer. Having used all her savings to care for Arias and now retired, she had to move to a remote Panama cattle farm. But she st­ayed in touch with Nu­r­­eyev via tele­phone. By 1990, she’d had 3 oper­at­ions and had to sell her treasures to pay for her care; thankfully Nur­eyev helped. A Covent Gar­dens gala raised money for her where Placido Domingo sang & Nureyev danced. After her Feb 1991 death, Fonteyn and Arias were buried in Panama. A memorial ser­vice was held in Jul 1991 at Westminster Abbey.

lyrical Russian artist: Isaac Levitan

Lithuanian Isaac Ilyich Levitan (1860-1900) was born in Kovensky Province, into a poor but well-educated Jewish family. His fat­her was a rabbi and foreign language teacher, but financ­ially struggled to support his wife and four children. Thank you to Tretyakov Gallery Magazine for a series of excellent essays.

 Tsar Al­exander III (reigned 1881–1894) strengthened the Pale of Settlement Laws and en­sured the removal of all Jewish people living in large cities in Russia, especially Moscow, St Peters­burg and Kiev. Clearly life for many Russian Jews in the late 1800s was miserable, including for the Levitans. So the family wanted to move to Moscow… but Moscow was not within the Pale!!

Autumn Day Sokolniki 1879

Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow

Still, Isaac and his brother’s artistic interests were en­cour­ag­ed and both boys enrolled in Moscow’s School of Painting, Sculp­ture and Archit­ecture - Adolf in 1871 and Isaac in 1873. Sadly the children lost mum in 1875 and dad in 1877. Isaac was left penniless and homeless, sleeping either with relatives or in the Moscow Art School’s classrooms. Fortunately the School waived the rest of his tuit­ion fees.

His best teacher took him on as an apprent­ice, to provide monetary aid. Alexei Savrasov (1830–1897) was a patient teacher who headed the Landscape Dept at the Moscow School of Painting. He was also arguably the most expressive of the Russian landscape painters of the later C19th.

Another inspiration was Savrasov’s suc­cess­or Vasily Polen­ov (1844-1927), whose serene lyrical land­scapes rubbed off on the young Levitan. During his ten years at the Art School, Lev­itan was a regular visitor at Polenov’s country house. There he drew, painted and developed warm friendships.

Golden Autumn Slobodka, 1889
State Russian Museum, St Petersburg

Other key influences on Levitan’s style included the Rus­sian teacher Vasily Perov (1834–82), French painters of the Bar­b­­izon school of landscape painting, and poetic classical real­ist Camille Corot (1796-1875).  Examine eg Autumn Day Sokolniki 1879 where a woman was walking care­free in the country side near Moscow. Levitan’s attitude towards nature was akin to the works of Anton Chekhov, who had become his friend. Autumn Day Sokolniki, painted at 19, was bought by famous philanthropist-art coll­ector Pavel Tretyakov.

Autumn Landscape with Church, 1890
State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg

One of Levitan’s pastels featured beautiful autumn yellows against a dull backdrop of greys and other weak colours. The Autumn Landscape, painted in 1890, showed the church in the background. It was bought by Pavel Tretyakov.

Of course Levitan’s passion for poetry and music were very important. Plus throughout his short life he was prone to depression. Out of these complex ex­periences, Levit­an’s "mood landscapes" took on a poetic and em­otional quality. 

Levitan first showed his work at an exhibition with Moscow’s Itinerant Wanderers, re­ceiving his first recognit­ion from the press. By 1884 the Wander­ers had offered Levitan full membership in their group, so he could exhibit regularly.

Even though Savrasov was fired as a lecturer due to his alcoh­ol­ism, Levitan continued to seek his advice. In 1883, Levitan was ready to graduate and expected to receive a first-class hon­our for one of his best landscape paintings. The diploma did not come but later Levitan began teaching landscape painting at the Moscow School of Painting.

 

Evening Church Bells 1892
Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow

In the mid 1880s Levitan’s finances improved. One of the best landscape artists among the progressive Itinerant Wand­erers, his main contribution to Russian art was atmos­pheric landscape, mastering colour and shade. Although the depiction of light was crucial to his com­pos­itions, Levitan was a realist rather than an Impress­ion­ist. 

Pastoral landscapes, human-free, were ch­aracteristic of his work. Though his late work displayed Impress­ionist elements, his palette was generally muted and Savrasovian. For examples of his landscapes, see Secluded Monastery 1890. The Road to Vladimir 1892 was a rare example of social hist­or­ical landscape and see evocative works like Evening Church Bells 1892, Golden Autumn 1895, Spring Flood 1897 and the small painting Reindeer 1895. All were bought by Pavel Tretyakov and are in the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow, a treasury of Russian fine art.

Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow, 

GW2RU

Levit­an was interested in the writings of the new intellectual lumin­ar­ies, writing to Sergei Diaghilev that he lay for days in a forest and read pessimistic German philosopher Schopen­hauer. So we might have expected a hushed, almost melanch­olic reverie. Above the Eternal Peace 1894 showed the artist’s meditations about the transience of human being. Levit­an painted the infamous road, along which convicts were marched to Siberia.

Above Eternal Peace 1894
Tret­yakov Gal­lery

Levitan was an active participant in artistic life; he taught at the Moscow School of Painting, where had trained, was actively involved the Moscow Club of Lit­er­ature and Art, and exhibited regularly with the Munich Secession (1892).

Isaac Levitan’s career lasted for c20 years only, but within this short time he created more than other Rus­sian landscape painters. Levitan’s most famous late 1890s paint­ings include Even­ing on Volga, Spring High Water and others. Levitan did not join modern art and remained true to realism. See his quiet twi­lights, moon lit nights and sleeping villages eg Haystacks Twilight 1899 and Sunny Day 1898.

If his earlier works were intimate and lyrical, his mature art became philosophical, expressing his med­it­ation about man and the world. His last works were increas­ingly filled with light, reflecting tranquillity and the eternal beauty of his beloved Russian Motherland. These pictures were loved by the intellectuals of the time, for they rep­resented the purest specimen of the Russian mood landscape.

Levitan was single, though many women liked him. In 1900 he died at 39 and was buried in Moscow's old Jewish cemetery. He left 40 unfin­ished paintings and 300 sketches.

 

Reindeer 1895
Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow

The Jewish population in Russia had grown to 5.6 million by the turn of the century, home of my own family. So I was always a Rus­s­ian tragic, now even more so. The work of Isaac Levitan belonged to the Golden Age of Russian culture, comparable with the works of such classics like Anton Chekhov, Pyotr Tchaik­ovsky and Kon­st­antin Stanislavsky. A Tel Aviv street was named after Isaac Lev­itan. Lots of his works, less known in Russia today, are now displayed in the Israel Museum in Jerusalem.

 

Isaac Levitan, photographed 1880s.