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.

Smithfield Meat Market London. Keep!!

Thanks to Ted Geier for the amazing history of Smithfield Market, London. The first written record of a weekly live stock market was 1174. Thomas Becket’s clerk described the area as a smooth field where there was a weekly sale of fine cows horses, swine and huge oxen. Animals were walked to Smithfield, were fattened up and sold. The slaughtering would then take place inside the City walls, at Newgate Shambles or Eastcheap, but in the 1300s the slaughter of animals moved to Smithfield, next to the River Fleet. A 1327 charter issued by Edward II made Smithfield London’s oldest meat market.

St Barts Hospital opened in 1123, the world’s oldest hospital. Just next door to the market, it was an important resource (and NB St Bartholomew was the patron saint of butchers). And Smithfield was a popular with the public in the medieval period for football, wrestling, archery, jousting & executions. The Elms at Smithfield is London’s oldest execution site; William Braveheart Wallace being hanged in 1305; Wat Tyler, leader of 1381 Peasant Revolt, was beheaded there; and where hundreds of Protestants were burnt at the stake for Queen Mary I in 1555-8. So the City’s bloody past was largely state-imposed! Tyburn Tree was the infamous gallows spot, now called Marble Arch.

Jones designed a dead meat building to house all services under one roof

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Animals trotted to the site from the Midlands in the medieval era; by C16th, cattle and sheep drovers linked Wales and Scotland to Smithfield. As the city’s population grew over time, the market also grew. 2,000,000 sheep and 200,000 cows were annually taken to Smithfield by mid C19th, causing horrid noise, unsanitary & congested, filth over flowing into the surrounding lanes.

The livestock market was later seen as unsuitable in this location and in 1852, the Smithfield Market Removal Act was passed, prompting the live cattle market to be relocated to Islington. 3 years later, the Bartholomew Fair was closed for good. Having brought cloth trading and all manner of revelry to Smithfield since 1133, it became a threat to public order! A growing criticism brought Smithfield into contempt for all its noise and stink, especially when London’s under-ground transit system was extended to Farringdon in 1863!

Smithfield was home to ancient professional guilds. Worshipful Co. of Butchers was based at Bartholomew Close since starting in c975, its members often heavily involved in City politics, including opposing the Removal Act of 1852. The Butchers was the only old trade organisation to remain active; other Livery Companies lived on as charities.

And Smithfield has a central place in the history of animal welfare law. The Cruel Treatment of Cattle Act of 1822 aimed to prevent the cruel treatment of cattle. Often cited as the first piece of animal rights legislation in the world, it arose partly from animal abuse at Smithfield. Father Arthur Broome, who co-founded the Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals-RSPCA 200 years ago, personally paid for market inspectors to monitor animal abuse.

The name Smithfield came from Smooth Field, the smooth grassy fields that once lay on the banks of the River Fleet. It was one of London’s lost rivers, that still flows underground beneath Farringdon Road. Note Charles Dickens described it thus: the ground was covered nearly ankle-deep with filth and mire; and a thick steam perpetually rising from the reeking bodies of the cattle, and mingling with the fog, which seemed to rest upon the chimney-tops, hung heavily above. Countrymen, butchers and drovers, mingled in a dense mass: drovers whistling, dogs barking, beasts bellowing, and hawkers shouting loudly.

Meat shops

The Conversation

Later Smithfield had no live animals so a state-of-the art New Market Building was needed. Horace Jones, City of London’s Architect and Surveyor, was commissioned to design it in 1866, and later he went on to design Billingsgate Market building, Leadenhall Market and then notably Tower Bridge. Billingsgate fish market, marked for closure in the same Corporation vote, will also stay.

Horace Jones' designed a wonderful entrance 

Building Design

The Victorian market he designed was functional AND beautiful, with its intricate and colourful design. The East and West market buildings were designed, opening in 1868. The design was state-of-the-art, using a lot of cast iron and glass to keep the market cool, crucial for meat and to maintain cleanliness. And revolutionary in that it was built over the first underground railway-line.

Metropolitan freight trains delivered meat into Jones’ huge basement of brick arches and iron girders. The meat was brought up to ground level for sale via hydraulic lift, or spiral ramp outside. It sits over a cross-section of 3 railway lines, one from the Chatham & Dover Railway, and one heading Eastwards. The impressive ramp leads down to the underground carpark below the rotunda. A Poultry Market structure followed in 1875 (and rebuilt post-fire in 1958) and the General Market building in 1883.

Meat rationing era which ended in 1954

Conversation

Smithfield Market was closed in WW2. The Government did not want crowds in buildings that were easily recognisable from the air. The decentralisation of meat stores ended to Smithfield’s trading and in 1942, the Poultry Market was damaged by a German bomb. In 1954 rationing on meat was lifted and Smithfield Market was back to normal. Meat then came from Australia, N.Zealand, Africa and Sth America, brought by rail via unloading bays underneath the building. The great displays of carcasses and the grand cast iron structure of Horace Jones’ building were restored. Lots of the businesses were still family run, often for generations. Visit the whole-sale meat market by day and admire the beautiful Victorian architecture. Or visit at 6.30am, at the end of the market’s very busy night activities.

In 2024 City of London Corporation voted to withdraw financial support for Smithfield Market, inspiring a petition to Protect Our Heritage and declarations in the British press that the soul of London will be butchered. At stake, defenders say, is a living legacy of meat trade that began there 1,000+ years ago, and the site of a rich seam of British history. But the market’s history was always one of change, involving shifts in justice, taste, hygiene and civic order.

The oldest meat and fish markets in London, now 850 years old, face permanent closure in 2028. Smithfield meat market, near St Paul's Cathedral, and Billingsgate fish market in Canary Wharf, are to be closed after the City of London Corporation voted to withdraw support. Work has already begun, turning this site into a new cultural and commercial hub, including the new permanent galleries of London Museum. Some of the disused buildings in the complex are already being restored.

Smithfield meat market’s Christmas Eve auction

ianvisits

The Christmas Eve sell-off dates back pre-refrigeration days when customers would buy as close to Christmas as possible. Meat dealers also needed to sell off everything before the Christmas shutdown. Enthusiastic customers can still pick up a fantastic financial deal each Christmas Eve.

Samuel Pepys: sex, violence & corruption

At Magdalene Cambridge, Samuel Pepys' own college, the Pepys Library was a rare example of a C17th private library and one of the most significant collections of books and manuscripts in British history. The diary, written in 1660-9, was found in this college in 1825, when the censored version was pub­lished. The uncensored version first appeared in the 1980s by Hyman of London, supplemented with commentary from prominent hist­orians.

Samuel Pepys' diaries were valued for their colourful evocation of Restoration England. Yet a fresh analysis of Pepys’ world-famous journals, carried out by Guy de la Bédoyère, revealed a man with a proclivity for coercion and sexual violence. He was a bully, a vain and philandering hypocrite, and a domineering and mean-minded husband.

Samuel Pepys was Britain’s most celebrated diarist. Between Jan 1660-May 1669, he recorded his daily life in illuminating detail. He wrote about his relationship with his wife Elizabeth, and the frustrations of managing his household and the servants. He left first-hand accounts of the Plague Epidemic that likely claimed c100,000 lives in the capital in 1665–66, and of the Great Fire of London that followed. He has come down through the years as one of the key primary sources for those trying to understand the Restoration era.

But there was a dark side to Pepys’ writings, which was never intended to be made public. He described a sordid litany of sexual encounters ranging from his relationships with long-term mistresses to his assaults on maids, including members of his own staff. In an era when corruption was common-place, Pepys also wrote candidly about using his position as a civilian naval official in Restoration London to coerce sexual services from women seeking financial promotion for their husbands.

Consider Feb 1667 when one day Pepys met in his office with Elizabeth Burrows, who was c30 years old and the widow of a naval lieutenant killed in action in 1665. Pepys had promised her financial help. This diary entry, tellingly omitted from editions published in the C19th, appeared without its meaning explained in the 1970s edition. “I had Mrs Burrows all alone in my closet and did there kiss and touch her breasts as much as I wanted until making myself do, but she would not suffer that I should put my hand below her skirts which I endeavoured. Thence away, and with my wife by coach to the Duke of York’s playhouse.”

Elizabeth de Pepys, by John Hayls

National Portrait Gallery

The description was typically casual. That Pepys went to collect his wife Elizabeth immediately after playing with Ms Burrows was astonishing. And the mix of English and foreign words was a deliberate tactic. Pepys tended to avoid specifics in his writing, and often used indirect references to sexual details, except “making myself do” was direct.

There was a very dark side to Pepys’ writings, which was never intended to be made public. So why isn’t this ugly side of Pepys’ character better known? It helps to know that past diary transcribers and biographers often depicted these activities as fun, or simply ignored them altogether. The full extent and implications of Pepys’ self-confessed adulterous activities, including coercion and sexual violence, were often glossed over. It’s a story further complicated by the history behind the diary text publication, sections of which first appeared in print in 1825.

Why was Pepys paying such close attention to his wife?

Artists painting portrait of Elizabeth Pepys.

Year? Mary Evans Picture Library.

Most of the controversial entries were excised from C19th editions, but all are now featured in the new transcriptions & Pepys's secret code translated from the original shorthand diary. Confessions of Samuel Pepys also revealed how all previous transcribers of the diary and many biographers had deliberately massaged Pepys's reputation.

Confessions of Samuel Pepys focused on Pepys's controversial private life for a modern readership, by charting his varied and complex relationships with women. They included his wife Elizabeth whom he both loved and treated abominably, their domestic servants, the mistresses whom he secretly visited in Westminster and Deptford, a host of other opportunistic encounters, the great ladies of the court whom he ogled, and the actresses whose company he delighted in and combined with casual petting. All these he recounted in shorthand, often disguising the more salacious occasions in his own cryptic Franco-Latino so-called language.

This is for those who seeks to understand what it was like to live back then, a time of Charles II, Restoration London, where women wore beauty spots, and some men thought nothing of attempting a seduction during a church service. Guy de la Bédoyère has transcribed previously un-known or hidden aspects of Samuel Pepys's diary that concerned his pursuit, seduction, harassment and assault of a large number of women. From the wives of colleagues, ladies of fashion and prostitutes, Pepys was catholic in his taste in women. What made this books so astonishing though, was less the titillating details (eg breast fondling) and more the honest way in which Pepys records such endeavours and the inevitable fall out with his wife. Elizabeth Pepys seemed a tragic figure. Pepys 1] made some attempts to stop his fornicating, 2] failed, 3] was full of self-loathing and 4] recorded his hapless attempts to make his wife happier. He showed the full expanse of human brilliance and folly.

Pepys was not simply a dirty predator; he was also needy and some of the women involved appeared to tolerate his affections, in hope of preferment for their husbands. Guy de la Bédoyère deserves great credit for unlocking this hitherto hidden aspect of Pepys's life, clarifying that women would not endanger their husbands' careers by reporting Pepys.

Pepys Library at Magdalene College, Cambridge.

Faculty of History

Gorgeous C19th synagogues in Melbourne

From the first European settlement in Australia, Jews were arriving with 1788’s First Fleet. The first settlement was in NSW, but soon spread to Tasmania and then Victoria. Along with explorer John Batman, founder of Melbourne, Jewish Joseph Solomon was a member of Port Phillip Society. It was in that society that Solomon with Batman received a grant of land from the local aboriginal community in 1835.

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Mikveh Yisrael Synagogue and School,

Exhibition St  Melbourne, 1859

architects Knight and Kerr.

National Trust Data Base

The 1841 census showed Melbourne had 57 Jews whose religious services were conducted in a Collins St drapery shop. It was decided to create the Jewish Congregational Society, seeking a governmental land grant to build the first synagogue. In 1844 they obtained a grant of land in Bourke St, consecrating the synagogue in 1848. Designed by Charles Laing & built by James Webb, the tiny congregation grew! In 1850 they applied for a government grant to build a bigger synagogue. It was approved and a new, larger synagogue designed by James’ brother Charles Webb: a rectangular building, gabled roof and columned portico!

Church Lane doesn’t have a church in it as it used to. And nearby Synagogue Lane doesn’t have a synagogue in it anymore, renamed Little Queen St in 1968. So why did only one of the two lanes not keep its name? Historian Robyn Annear* said that it was renamed as Bourke Lane in a civic cleansing ahead of the 1880 International Exhibition. The name change was recorded by Public Works Committee in June, suggesting the new name reduced annoyances directed at those attending Lt Bourke St. So was it an anti-Semitic move or one designed to stop problems for local Jews? Read Street names: Why was Synagogue Lane renamed? .

Bourke St Hebrew Congregation

opened 1848

By the time a separate Victorian state was established in 1851, Melbourne Jewry had their new classical Melbourne Hebrew Congregation and early congregational Presidents and Board members became aldermen and councillors of Melbourne City Council. Jews could go into both State Houses of Parl-iament, the Oaths of Office Simplification Bill in 1857 repealing the oath that parliamentarians swore: On the true faith of a Christian. 

The 2nd President Asher Hyman Hart asked Melbourne's Mayor to offer a reward for discovering gold, north of the city. Thankfully for Melbourne, the discoveries that led to the Gold Rush of 1851 slowed the emigration to NSW. These boom times and economic explosion gave Melbourne its marvellous Victorian heritage, and brought many European migrants. Since first Rabbi Moses Rintel in 1849, the congregation has been loyally served by a number of rabbis. A fine man was Rabbi Dr Israel Brodie, who went from St Kilda Rd pulpit to Chief Rabbi of British Empire pre-WW2.

Melbourne’s synagogue had been established in 1847 in Bourke St, but Rabbi Rintel & followers parted in 1857. A second congregation had formed in East Melbourne, mostly recently arrived German Jews after a doctrinal disagreement with the synagogue committee. They met in hired premises till a small synagogue was complete in 1860 in Lit Lonsdale St. They had no permanent meeting place for 20 years until the new East Melbourne Synagogue in Albert St opened Sept 1877. But the facade wasn’t finished till 1883. 

        

East Melbourne Hebrew Congregation, front entrance (above) and interior (below)

The Melbourne Synagogue came from noted Melbourne architects Crouch and Wilson. It was inspired by Melbourne’s old Bourke St synagogue. East Melbourne is socially significant for its link with that Jewish community, mainly as a focal-point for religious facilities. It is also significant for its imposing Renaissance Revival facade with the addition of the 2 octagonal domes flanking the central pediment and the survival of the tabernacle and altar. The two-storeyed rendered brick building had a slate roof. The facade was also completed in the Renaissance Revival style with 5 bays, projecting slightly on the pedimented temple front. Star of David was set in bas-relief in the tympanum. A parapet was carried over the tympanum and the cornice. Twin octagonal domes flank the central pediment. The internal space had a gallery on 3 sides on cast iron columns and the main ceiling was panelled with cornices. Victorian Heritage added the site to its Register.

The original Bourke St Synagogue was sold in 1929 when it became and stayed a justice firm. When the new site was chosen, there was a strong Jewish presence in Toorak. So the congregation moved to the new site, designed by congregant Nahum Barnet in Toorak Rd, and the foundation stone of the building was laid in Ap 1929. The interior was inspired by the Bourke St synagogue, with a Corinthian portico, copper-clad dome and glass stained windows. Barnet's plan agreed with that of overseas synagogues of Interwar Academic Classical design: semi-circular seating and a ladies' gallery. Interior decorations include stained glass windows created by Karl Duldig. In 1930 the community moved to its present Toorak site, Toorak & Kilda Rds. St Kilda Rd is one of the world’s great boulevards where congregants could walk to the new synagogue on Sabbath. 

Melbourne Hebrew Congregation/Toorak synagogue, 

front steps (above); interior (below)

Melbourne Hebrew Congregation/Toorak synagogue, of a grand design with the best Tasmanian black-wood carving, now has 1350 seats and 900+ members. With a dome 100+ feet high, it is an iconic building with Heritage overlay. It’s seen as the Cathedral Synagogue, the primary synagogue that hosts state and national events.

After 180+ years, Melbourne had c50 orthodox congregations, plus a few Liberal-Reform congregations and a Conservative synagogue. Post-WW2 immigration boosted a Eurocentric Jewish community but soon European approaches combined in a more Australian outlook. Melbourne is very cosmopolitan and Jews have been able to succeed in this society since it began. There have been many successful academics, scientists, judges, engineers, medicos, lawyers and business people. Past members of the congregation have included two Governors-General: Sir Isaac Isaacs & Sir Zelman Cowen; Sir Benjamin Benjamin succeeded with Exhibition Building; Gen. Sir John Monash was the most effective WWI commander & superb civil engineer

Read J Aron & J Arndt, Enduring Remnant, history of the first 150 years of the Melbourne Hebrew Congregation 1841–1991, Melb UP, 1992. 

And R Annear, City Lost and Found: Whelan the Wrecker’s Melbourne 2014*