Leonid Pasternak

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Self portrait with the wife

Leonid Osipovich Pasternak (Russian: Леонид Осипович Пастернак, April 4, 1862 N.S. - May 31, 1945) was a Russian Impressionist painter.

[edit] Biography

Leonid Pasternak was born in Odessa to the family of a Jewish innkeeper on April 4, 1862. He was the youngest of the six children in the family. He started to draw very early, but his family tried to discourage him, as they feared that his drawing would interfere with his studies. His first sponsor was the local street cleaner who began buying Pasternak's art when Leonid was seven years old.

In 1881-1885 Leonid studied at the Moscow University, first at the Medical Department, then at the Department of Law. Eventually he decided to devote his life to Art and entered the Royal Academy of Art in Munich from which he graduated in 1887. He returned to Russia, served the compulsory two years in the army (artillery regiment) and in 1889 started a career as a full-time painter.

Moscow in Winter, 1912

The start of his career was very successful. His first exhibited painting was bought by Pavel Tretyakov, the most important art sponsor in Russia of the time. He soon became a popular painter, a member of the so called Polenov circle, that included Valentin Serov, Isaac Levitan, Mikhail Nesterov, Konstantin Korovin. In 1889 he married a prominent pianist of the time, Rosalinda Kaufman.

Leonid Pasternak was one of the first Russian painters who labelled himself an Impressionist. In Russia in the 1880s and 1890s such a proclamation was novel enough to draw attention to an artist. Leonid also was a member of the Peredvizhniki and Union of Russian Artists movements. He was a friend of Leo Tolstoy, for months lived in Yasnaya Polyana, and painted many portraits of the great writer, also illustrating his novels War and Peace and Resurrection. He was awarded a medal at the World Fair in Paris (1900) for his illustrations of Tolstoy's novels.

Pasternak was elected a member of the Imperial Academy of Arts (1905), and also taught at the Moscow School of painting, sculpturing and architecture.

In 1921 Pasternak needed an eye surgery, that was performed in Berlin. He travelled there with his wife and two daughters, leaving sons (Boris and Alexander) in Russia. After the surgery he decided not to return to Russia, remaining in Berlin until 1938 when he took refuge from the Nazis in Great Britain. He died in Oxford on May 31, 1945.

[edit] Works

In the Dressing Room. 1893	The Night Before Examination	Conductor V. Suk. 1898	Island Rügen, 1906
Under a Lamp. (Leo Tolstoy in his Family Circle). 1902	Leo Tolstoy, 1908	Leo Tolstoy	Lev Shestov, 1910
Nikolai Fyodorovich Fyodorov	Pine-trees and the Sea. 1910	Unloading a Train Car. Odessa Port. 1911	A Sun-Beam
Vyacheslav Ivanov, Lev Kobilinskij-Ellis, Nikolai Berdyaev (standing) and Andrei Bely	The Golden Autumn. (Vorobyovy Mountains in Moscow).	At the Window. Autumn. 1913	Sons, Boris and Alexander
E. Levina 1916	Mikhail Gershenzon, 1917	Shlomo Anski, 1918	Collecting Apples, 1918
Palestine. The Heat and a Donkey. 1924	Rainer Maria Rilke