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Vladimir
Alexandrovich Plotnikov (1867-1917)

Biography and information

Vladimir Plotnikov was born in Perm to the family accountant. His mother was the daughter of painter Ivan Babin. In 1881 he entered the Academy of fine arts in the Studio of I. E. Repin. In 1897, the carpenters received the title of artist to determine for themselves the Russian antiquity, as a topic for further work. In 1903, the artist began to annually travel to Russia to, as he wrote in one of his letters, "to memorialize those monuments that are of great artistic interest and which has not yet caught up with the vandal hand of the destroyer."
As a result of trips (1906-1916 gg.) in the North of Russia in Arkhangelsk and Olonets province, on the Pinega and the Kola Peninsula, he wrote a large number of watercolors (as well as photos − about 1 thousand negatives), made drawings of monuments of ancient art and architecture, including the old believers, wrote of the Northern landscapes. Particularly valuable examples six columns of the tomb. Collected during trips Vladimir Plotnikov things: utensils, clothes, shoes, attributes of a hunter, ecclesiastical objects, etc. − was intended for the ethnographic Department of the Russian Museum.
In 1908, the carpenters made a trip to the Perm region, gathering a large collection of things the Komi-Perm for the Russian and local museums. In particular, rare specimens of carved folk calendars. The artist also made pictures of samples of decorative carvings, which local residents decorated of the logs from the inside: reindeer, Christmas trees, etc. Part of the collected goods, architectural monuments, peasant rituals were reproduced in magazines and as postcards.
Of special interest are watercolor drawings Plotnikova old believer cemeteries of the city of Kemi and the village of Virma, completed in 1907. Different types of tombstones: funerary columns-teremtsi with carved crosses, old wooden house. There are examples of the external coloring of the peasant houses in the Arkhangelsk province. By the way, there is evidence that home in Zaonezhie were painted, just before our time the coloring is not preserved.