The name of the artist Isaac Levitan is connected with the quiet Volga town of Ples in the most direct way. It was he who glorified the beauty of these places in his paintings. Now Ples has become a resort town on the Volga river, where thousands of people come for a relaxing holiday in the Russian nature.
Levitan house Museum is located in a small house with a mezzanine on the Volga embankment. The Museum in this house was created in 1972 by art critic Alla Pavlovna Vavilova and consultants from the Tretyakov gallery. Here you can see the rooms where Isaac Levitan and his friends-artists, Alexey Stepanov and Sofia Kuvshinnikova lived. There is also a very interesting exhibition dedicated to the work of Levitan in Ples.
In 1888, Levitan and his friends sailed along the Volga river in search of a town with the beautiful landscapes of Russian nature. They found their inspiration in Ples. They rented a mezzanine in the house of the merchant Solodovnikov. Artists went to different places every day, made sketches, watercolors, and painted pictures. They decided to stay in Ples until the end of navigation in late autumn. Thus, Levitan painted many paintings with landscapes of the Golden autumn.
In the next two years, the friends came to Ples two more times, stayed here all summer. In these places, Levitan painted his most famous paintings: "Over eternal rest" and "Evening bell". In total, 23 paintings and more than two hundred sketches were written by him in Ples.
The house Museum has a large exhibition. The rooms where the artist friends lived are located in the second-floor mezzanine. On the first floor, part of the exhibition is dedicated to Levitan`s stay in Ples for three years. In the second part, you can see the paintings that Levitan, Stepanov and Kuvshinnikova, painted in the years when they lived in Ples. Next to the house on the embankment, there is a bust of Levitan.
