The State Tretyakov Gallery
Such images as "Moonlight Night" and "Last Sunbeams" reflects the view of the world of Isaac Levitan in his late years. These works are comparable to Chekhov’s images in whose stories of the same years there appears a description of landscapes, very close to the images created by Levitan. Thus, in the story “Man in a Case” dated 1898 the beauty of nature is contrasted with vulgarity and little nothings of life: “When at a moonlit night you see a wide rural street with its huts and haystacks, sleeping willows, it becomes quiet in your soul; in this peace, sheltered in night shadows from works, worries and grief, it is gentle, sad, beautiful, and it seems that stars look at it kindly and with tenderness and that there is no evil on the earth and everything is fine."
Such lyrical intonation of paintings is characteristic of Nikolay Mescherin, and Vasiliy Perepletchikov, and Manuel Aladgalov, and Alexey Stepanov. All of them were longing to convey charm and light sadness peculiar to a Russian landscape.