One of the pupils of Kyriak Kostandi (1852–1921) in the Odesa Art School, around the turn of the nineteenth to twentieth centuries, was the young Arnold Lakhovskyi (1880–1937), the subject of this article.

Lakhovskyi, who you’ll also see referred to as Arnold Borisovich Lakhovsky and Aaron Berkovich, was born in the northern Ukraine town of Chornobyl in 1880. He trained first in Odesa, then at the Fine Arts Academy in Munich, Germany. In 1904, he went to live in Saint Petersburg, Russia, where he was a student of Ilia Repin at the Royal Academy of Arts. Four years later he visited Palestine, where he taught in the Bezalel Art School in Jerusalem for three months. He then returned to complete his training in Saint Petersburg in 1912.

Lakhovskyi lived in Saint Petersburg and the town of Pskov (near the Russian border with Estonia) until he left the country in 1925. His view looking along The Black Brook, Saint Petersburg from about 1910 shows one of the many waterways in the city, in the bright colours typical of Impressionist style.

In about 1912, Lakhovskyi appears to have visited the city of Bergen amid the fjords of the south-west coast of Norway, where he painted Bergen. Sunny Day. This is a fine oil sketch probably painted in front of the motif, in summer.

Lakhovskyi painted this glimpse In the Samovar Workshop in about 1919. Samovars are a traditional container used for heating and boiling water, most typically in Russia for making tea. There are three fine examples of this craftsman’s work on display in the window at the upper right.

Although undated, I suspect that he painted Boat at the Pier. Bergen during a further visit to Norway in the summer of 1924, according to the date by his signature.

In 1925, Lakhovskyi moved to Paris, where he lived and painted until 1933.

During this period, he travelled to some of the popular coastal resorts, including Saint-Malo in Brittany, where he probably made a series of studies for this studio painting showing the spire of the cathedral of Saint Vincent, which dominates this port.

He also travelled to Old Quimperlé, another town in Brittany, this time on the south-west coast, at the northern end of the Bay of Biscay. Notable here is the muting of his previously bright colours.

In 1933, Lakhovskyi emigrated to the USA, where he settled in New York City and became a successful portraitist. Two years later he started teaching at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, MA.

Conversation is one of several paintings he made in about 1935, showing small groups of men talking together indoors, with similar muted colours.

Lakhovskyi died in New York City in early 1937, just short of his fifty-seventh birthday.

References

Wikipedia

Andrey Kurkov and others (2022) Treasures of Ukraine, A Nation’s Cultural Heritage, Thames & Hudson. ISBN 978 0 500 02603 8.
Konstantin Akinsha and others (2022) In the Eye of the Storm, Modernism in Ukraine 1900-1930s, Thames & Hudson. ISBN 978 0 500 29715 5.