Arnold Lakhovsky

Biography

In 1908 Lakhovsky went to Palestine for the summer break and did not come back for a long time. He fell ill, stayed in Jerusalem for about a year and three months, and was expelled for non-attendance from the Higher Art School at the Academy of Arts.

He was born on 27 January 1880 (15 January, Old Style) in Chernobyl, in Kyiv Governorate, into a Jewish family. In 1902 he graduated from the Odessa Art School, where his teachers were Kyriak Kostandi and Gennady Ladyzhensky. He then went to Munich: he worked in the studio of Marr at the Academy of Fine Arts there, attended Anton Ažbe’s school, and worked in Worpswede (the name is given as “Vorums”, so I cannot vouch for it myself). In 1904 he arrived in St Petersburg and entered the Higher Art School at the Academy of Arts; he did not get into Ilya Repin’s studio until 5 April 1907. The Palestine trip of 1908 turned out to be a turning point in his studies. In Jerusalem he taught at Bezalel, the school of arts and crafts; in 1908–1909 this was his main work. On his return he petitioned the rector, Vladimir Beklemishev, and was reinstated, assigned to the studio of Pavel Chistyakov. After that he changed studios twice more. On 25 November 1909 he asked to be transferred to Arkhip Kiselyov, and after Kiselyov’s death in 1911 he moved to Nikolai Dubovskoy. He graduated with top marks on 1 November 1912 and received the title of artist for his painting “The Last Rays”.

Staying in St Petersburg turned out to be the natural choice. He painted in the city itself, in its suburbs and in north-west Russia, including Pskov. From 1915 Lakhovsky belonged to the Kuindzhi Society, and from 1916 to the Wanderers (the Society for Travelling Art Exhibitions). In November 1915 he became one of the founders of the Jewish Society for the Encouragement of the Arts, joined its audit commission and the council of its art section, and took part in auctions for the benefit of Jews who had suffered in the war. He also taught at the Higher Women’s Architectural Courses, where he gave classes in watercolour and held the title of professor.

In 1925, at the invitation of the Luxembourg Museum, he left for Paris. From 1927 to 1930 a series of his solo exhibitions was held at the gallery of Georges Charpentier. In 1931 he became a founding member of the Masonic lodge “Free Russia”, and in 1933 he joined the board of the artists’ section of the Union of Russian Art Figures in France. His subjects were mostly urban and travel scenes: Petrograd, Pskov, Venice, Normandy, Belgium, the Alps, Lake Annecy. Genre scenes and portraits are less common.

In the same year, 1933, he moved to New York. Commissioned portraits became his main source of income there. In 1935, together with Boris Grigoriev and Alexander Yakovlev, he taught at the school of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.

Lakhovsky died on 7 January 1937 in New York and was buried at Beth David Cemetery in Elmont, on Long Island. His younger brother Nuta Lakhovsky (1888–1908) also studied at the Odessa school and at the Higher Art School in St Petersburg, but died young.

In October 1937 a memorial exhibition was held at the Charpentier gallery, and on 29 November a memorial evening took place in Paris. In Russia he was remembered late: the first modern exhibition took place in Samara in September 2015, and in Moscow, at the Museum of Russian Impressionism, the solo show “The Enchanted Wanderer” opened on 28 May 2016.