Rafail Levitsky

Who was Rafail Levitsky?

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

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.

Rafail was born into a wealthy aristocratic family. He was married to Anna Vasilevna Olsufevsky. He 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.

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

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