Serge Gregory surveys Chekhov’s artistic education, his time working the Moscow art beat as a cultural critic, reviewing operas and exhibits, and enjoying the inside scoop on these worlds thanks in part to his older brother Nikolai, an accomplished painter. Gregory demonstrates how Chekhov’s literary impressionism was formed by parallel movements in the arts, especially by his friendship with Isaac Levitan, whose painterly approach to mood was decisive for Chekhov’s own fictional landscapes.