27 Facts About Rafail Levitsky

Rafail Sergeevich Levitsky was a Russian and Soviet genre, romantic, and impressionist artist who was an active participant in the Peredvizhniki movement.

Rafail Levitsky was the second cousin of Aleksandr Ivanovich Herzen, the writer and outstanding public figure; and son to Count Sergei Lvovich Levitsky, one of the founders of photography in Russia and Europe's early photographic pioneers.

Rafail Levitsky was friend to author Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy who visited and stayed with him and his wife on several occasions.

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

Rafail Levitsky received medals in 1867 - 2 silver and in 1872 - a minor and two major honours.

Rafail Sergeevich Levitsky was a Professor of Drawing and Painting on Porcelain at the School of Imperial Society of Honouring Visual Arts from 1884 until the school was closed by the Soviets in 1918.

Rafail Levitsky's 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.

Rafail Levitsky exhibited with the Peredvizhniki Movement from 1880 to 1894.

Rafail Levitsky visited this cultural centre of old Russian architecture, church and folk art in 1900 and 1904.

Today, Rafail Levitsky is still rated among the Great Russian artists by the Art Union of Russia.

Rafail Levitsky would meet Leo Tolstoy and become good friends with the world-famous author discussing Tolstoy's theories on art and his personal connection to the art and artists of the day.

Rafail Sergeevich Levitsky was classmate and close friends with fellow Itinerant artist Ilya Repin.

On one such visit, Rafail Levitsky welcomed Tolstoy hospitably into his workshop and discussed painting Tolstoy's portrait.

Rafail Levitsky's father was Sergei Lvovich Levitsky, who is considered the patriarch of Russian photography and one of Europe's most important early photographic pioneers, inventors and innovators.

Sergei Rafail Levitsky was one of the founders of Russian's first Photographic Societies, a writer of articles for the Russian magazine "Photograph" and was actively involved in organizing national and international photographic exhibitions throughout his lifetime.

Rafail Levitsky wrote memoirs in two volumes entitled, Reminiscences of an Old Photographer and How I Became a Photographer.

Between 1859 and 1864 Sergei Rafail Levitsky operated a photographic studio at 22, rue de Choiseul in Paris formerly the address for American daguerreotypist Warren Thompson and joined the Societe Francaise de Photographie.

In 1864 Rafail Levitsky wrote about his Paris career in The Russian Magazine "Photograph" in which he described his great success and artistic triumph which "brought to his Paris studio daily orders of some 1500 requests; many of which could not be filled".

In 1864 when his father closed the Levitsky studio in Paris, Rafail returned to Russia with his father.

The Rafail Levitsky St Petersburg studio of the 1890s was a father-son enterprise.

Rafail Levitsky took part in numerous international and Russian photographic exhibitions, sometimes serving on the jury.

The Rafail Levitsky Studio was located in Moika River Embankment, 30, Nevsky Prospect, 28, and Kazanskaya Street, 3.

Rafail Levitsky is considered to be the first artist in history to be a fine art photographer.

However, the Rafail Levitsky Studio's lasting importance is found in their ability to understand and exploit the relationship between art and photography; understanding that it could be possible that a photographer using a mechanical device that creates the image, could impose their personal spirit into the finished photograph.

Rafail Levitsky's achievements preceded famous artists as photographers such as Edgar Degas who began taking photographs in 1895 and Man Ray who would not produce his first significant photographs until 1918.

Rafail Levitsky's photos are the first to show images of sitters in naturalistic poses, soft lighting, within naturalistic backgrounds, and expressing real sentiments like joy and laughter or tenderness as in the photo of Czarina Alexandra with Olga and Maria.