Plakhov, Lavr Kuzmich

Plakhov, Lavr Kuz’mich

 

Born 1810; died Feb. 8 (20), 1881, in St. Petersburg. Russian painter.

Plakhov studied in St. Petersburg with the artist and lithographer K. P. Beggrov. Beginning in 1829 he studied with A. G. Venetsianov, and from 1832 to 1836 at the Academy of Arts with M. N. Vorob’ev. Between 1836 and 1842 he was in Berlin and Düsseldorf, working under E. Pistorius and A. Schroedter.

Plakhov was a genre painter of the Venetsianov school; examples of his work in this manner are The Coachmen’s Room at the Academy of Arts (1834) and At the Smithy (1845), both in the Russian Museum, Leningrad. Beginning in the late 1840’s he virtually abandoned painting for photography.

REFERENCE

Smirnov, G. V. “L. K. Plakhov.” In Russkoe iskusstvo: Ocherki o zhizni i tvorchestve khudozhnikov, pervaia polovina deviatnadtsatogo veka. Moscow, 1954.