Recently rediscovered in France, the present work is one of several portraits by Alexander Yakovlev of Arturo López Willshaw (1900-1962). It was painted half a decade after his full-length portrait, which sold in these rooms in November 2008 (Fig.1). Dating from the end of the 1920s, it shows a more mature López Willshaw, dressed in a three-piece suit.

The scion of a wealthy Chilean family who had made their fortune in fertilisers, López Willshaw settled in Paris in the interwar years. His father Arturo López Pérez owned Château des Vives-Eaux in Vovses, the grounds of which form the backdrop for the 1923 portrait. López Willshaw was an aesthete and connoisseur with the necessary means, assembling a vast collection of art and objects, as well as making major donations, notably to the palace of Versailles. Le Tout-Paris was well aware that López Willshaw was gay and that his marriage to his cousin Patricia Lopez Huici (1912-2010) was one of convenience. Patricia was the great niece of Eugenia Errazuriz (1860-1951) the great Chilean patron and taste maker, who was close to Pablo Picasso and Sergei Diaghilev. Patrica was one of the great beauties and socialites of her generation, and led the list of the best dressed women in the world three times in the 50s and 60s. Pavel Tchelitchew, another Russian émigré artist, painted her portrait in 1941 (previously in the Edward James collection in West Dean).

The present works would likely have been commissioned to mark López Willshaw’s purchase of 12, Rue du centre in Neuilly-sur-Seine, in 1928. The house had been built in 1899 by Paul Rodocanachi, heir to the London branch of a wealthy Greek family, and reputedly one of López Willshaw’s lovers. The latter went on to completely transform the mansion in the style of Versailles, to house his collection and to host lavish parties. Here, López Willshaw is holding an architectural plan of his new house in Neuilly, identified by the inscription by his right hand: Casa dell Signore / A. Lopez / Auttore / della pianta / Rodocanachi / 1928.

Alexander Yakovlev had settled in Paris in late 1919, after an extended sojourn in Far East Asia, choosing not to return to his home country of Russia, ravaged by revolutions and civil war. The following year he had a solo exhibition at the Galerie Barbazanges. Book deals and commissions soon followed, including from the López family. In 1924-1925, Yakovlev travelled across Africa as the official painter of the Croisière noire, the famous expedition initiated by industrialist André Citroën to promote his automobiles. The influence of the African expedition on Yakovlev’s work is evident in the present portrait, especially when compared to the one from 1923. The palette is more restrained and dominated by earth tones. Particularly noteworthy is the tie, which references the patterns Yakovlev encountered in Africa and which also feature in his drawings and paintings from the period, such as on his masterpiece Titi and Naranghe, Daughters of Chief Eki Bondo (1926, Fig.2). The tie is also testament to the influence of the bold geometric pattern of African art and design, on fashion of the Art Deco period.

After López Willshaw’s death in 1962, his fortune and art collection were divided between Patricia and his much younger lover Alexis von Rosenberg, Baron de Redé (1922-2004). López-Willshaw had met de Redé in New York in 1941, and convinced him to come to Paris, where he moved into an apartment in the famous Hôtel Lambert. Over the decades since his death, Arturo López Willshaw’s art collection was dispersed through various auctions, including a single-owner sale of important silver at Sotheby’s Monaco in June 1992. The present portrait was recently acquired from a French auction where it was offered with an incorrect attribution with other property related to the López family.