Alexander Evgenievich Yakovlev

Peter Tretyakov, New York
Acquired from the above in 1975 by Konstantin Pio-Ulsky, New York

Wallingford, Connecticut, The Choate School, Exhibition of Paintings and Drawings by Alexandre Iacovleff, November 1966, no.14

 

L.Vogel, Alexandre Iacovleff, Dessins et Peintures d'Asie, Paris, 1934, illustrated
The Choate School, Exhibition of Paintings and Drawings by Alexandre Iacovleff, Wallingford, Connecticut, 1966, no. 14

Original canvas. There are some minor pin-holes in places to the right edge. There is a layer of light surface dirt, a scratch in the upper right corner, a few lines of craquelure in places to the sky and flecks of paint loss above the central figure.
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This spectacular canvas was painted on Yakovlev's return from the 1931-32 Croisière jaune expedition.  Yakovlev was a superb ethnographer, but the spiritual and historical dimensions of his work were equally important to him, if not more so. As he stated himself while preparing for the expedition, they were to cross lands where "Alexander the Great, Darius, Mahomet, Genghis Khan, the monk Hsuan Tsang and the Venetian Marco Polo had left their material and spiritual traces". Mongolian Horsemen is such a powerful work precisely because of the underlying sense of permanence in his depiction of turbulent sky and timeless steppe.

As Félix Marcilhac comments in 'Alexandre Iacovleff et la Magie du Paysage' (Alexandre Iacovleff: Itinérances, Paris 2004.) his landscapes are filled with a diaphanous light which adds a surreal element; the contrasts are not pronounced, the atmospheres dense, and while small human figures play a part in the compositions, they are far from being determining elements. The cool, washed-out palette and infinite horizons of the present work are common to a number of smaller paintings from the Pamir – Mongolia stretch of the expedition, such as Lake Karakoul, Pamir (1931, Collection Audouin-Dubreuil).

The frieze-like quality of Mongolian Horsemen owes much to Yakovlev's interest in fresco painting, which he studied under Dmitry Kardovsky at the St Petersburg Academy of Arts. During his subsequent travels in Italy with Vasily Shukhaev in 1913-14, Yakovlev was struck by the magnificence of Renaissance frescos, in particular the force of expression and severe style of Mantegna and the mathematical rationalism of Piero della Francesca, which informs much of his later work, from his murals to the present canvas. On return from the Croisière jaune expedition, he made a great series of copies in tempera of frescoes at Pompeii which were purchased by the Fogg Museum at Harvard. Mongolian Horsemen can be seen as a magnificent synthesis of this most ancient Western art form with unaltered scenes from the East. It displays the artist's 'classical integrity and discipline of the best in the academic tradition – the gusto of a humanist whose perceptual world was always exciting – and the spontaneity and assurance of a virtuoso...' (The Choate School exhibition catalogue introduction, Connecticut, 1966).

The offered lot comes from the renowned collection of Konstantin Pio-Ulsky, a director of The Russian Nobility Association and grandson of the famous Russian admiral and scientist, Georgy Nikolaevich Pio-Ulsky, who rebuilt the Imperial fleet after the 1905 Russo-Japanese war. Konstantin's father Colonel Antony Georgievich, commanded a battery in the Kornilov Division, one of the crack units of the White Army in the Russian Civil War; both he and his wife took part in the Ice March in 1918, otherwise known as the First Kuban Campaign, a military withdrawal from the city of Rostov south towards Kuban in the hope of gaining the support of the Don Cossacks against the Bolshevik government. Konstantin Pio-Ulsky is a well-known portrait photographer based in Manhattan, whose subjects have ranged from presidents and famous politicians to Hollywood stars.