Alexander Evgenievich Yakovlev

Georges-Marie Haardt, Paris
Maître Blache, Versailles, La Croisière Noire. Peintures. Dessins. Croquis par A Iacovleff, 23 May 1967, lot 30

Paris, Hôtel Jean Charpentier, Alexandre Iacovleff: Exposition de peintures et dessins, 7-23 May 1926
Paris, Musée du Louvre, Pavillon de Marsan, Exposition La Croisière Noire, October 1926-February 1927
Brussels, Cercle artistique et littéraire, Waux Hall du Parc, Alexandre Iacovleff, Peintre attaché à l'Expédition Citroën Centre Afrique, 2ème mission Haardt Audouin Dubreuil: Exposition de peintures et dessins, 26 April - 10 May 1927, no.36
Boulogne-Billancourt, Musée des Années Trente, Alexandre Iacovleff, Itinérances, 31 March - 14 August 2004
Tournai, Musée des Beaux-Arts, L'Afrique rêvée, 4 December 2010 – 28 March 2011

'A.E.Yakovlev v Afrike', Zhar-ptitsa, no.14, 1926, illustrated p.27
A.Alexandre, 'At the Museum of Decorative Arts exhibition on the Croisière Noire, Yakovlev, Citroën and the Black Mystery' in The Renaissance of French Art and the Luxury Industries, 1926, no.10, illustrated p.568
P. Mille, 'L'oeuvre africain d'Alexandre Iacovleff', Art et décoration, June 1926, illustrated p.187
A. Iacovleff, Dessins et peintures d'Afrique croquis et notes de voyage exécutés au cours de l'Expédition Citröen Centre Afrique, Lucien Vogel (ed.), Jules Meynial, Paris, 1927, illustrated pl. 30
C.Haardt de la Baume, Alexandre Iacovleff : L'artiste voyageur, Paris: Flammarion, 2000, illustrated p.51
Alexandre Iacovleff: Itinérances exhibition catalogue, Musée des Années 30, Paris: Somogy, 2004, illustrated p. 210, no.149, listed p.227
A.Audouin-Dubreuil, 'The Croisière Noire on the Trail of the Explorers of the 19th century', Grenoble, 2004, illustrated p.73
L'Afrique rêvée exhibition catalogue, Brussels: éditions Racine, 2010, illustrated p.72

The offered lot is one of the most iconic images from Alexander Yakovlev's entire Croisière Noire series, an impressive body of work documenting Andre Citroen's pioneering expedition across the African Continent (28 October 1924 – 26 June 1925). One of a group of large-scale oils painted on the artist's return to Paris in 1926 based on his preparatory sketches, this extraordinary portrait was exhibited alongside Yakovlev's complete African portfolio in two sensational shows at the Galerie Charpentier and the Louvre that same year.

In spite of the arduous conditions, Yakovlev worked tirelessly throughout the team's journey from Algeria to Madagascar, producing over 400 drawings, studies and sketches in tempera, a medium chosen for its versatility and fast-drying properties. The response in both the French and international press was unprecedented. Banda Woman and her Child was immediately singled out by critics as being especially praiseworthy and reproduced extensively in leading cultural publications of the time (fig,1). At a time when the fashion for Black Art was experiencing its apogee in France, a work with such powerfully sculptural qualities was evidently linked to the Primitivism of Picasso and Brancusi.   In his article in La Renaissance de l'art français et des industries de luxe, Arsène Alexandre described Yakovlev's African muses as exuding a 'savage... African beauty'

In January 1925 the travellers reached Ubangi-Shari – now the Central African Republic - where the inhabitants' fetishist beliefs are deeply rooted in magic and the unconscious. Comprising a number of distinct tribes, the Banda - a historically cannibalistic people - lived to the east of the country, at the crest of the Nile-Congo watershed. Like the Mangbetu, they fascinated Yakovlev.

Yakovlev was especially captivated by the strong bond between African mothers and their children, and it is the subject of a great many of the sketches produced during the expedition. However Banda Woman and her Child is the only work on this theme which the artist completed in oil. The mother's expression is one of calm beatitude, and placid submissiveness, and contrasts with that of the infant, whose resolute gaze is focused on the distance. She supports him protectively on her hip, creating a striking contraposto which is echoed in Yakovlev's full-length portrait of Molende the Mangbetu. Her accessories are minimal: a simple loin cloth, two leather bracelets and one in ivory, allowing the viewer to focus on the physical features of his sitters' bodies and their emotional connection.

The mother's rounded stomach suggests she is already expecting another child, so the composition is at the same time a hymn to motherhood and fertility, both central themes in African culture (fig.2). In this tender double portrait, Yakovlev reappraises the Quattrocento Madonna and Child, and in the unornamented simplicity of his subjects endows the composition with unaffected sincerity.

The figures are as one, intertwined in their embrace, an impression underscored by the artist's use of similar warm, red-brown skin tones for both mother and child. They stand out sharply against the pale off-white of the background, decorated to resemble the wall of a Banda hut, which would typically be painted with symbolic representations of animals such as caimans, elephants and panthers; or the figures of warriors – an example of which is just visible above the child's head - dancers or even the first European settlers.

Unlike other artists who travelled and worked in Africa, Yakovlev reached the as yet unexplored territory of Black Africa beyond the Sahara. The offered lot, perhaps more than any other painted during the Croisière Noire, epitomises the primitive strength and the mysterious beauty of this region. It is no surprise that Georges-Marie Haardt, chose this work for his own collection, displaying it proudly on an easel in his apartment, which had been fitted out as a memorial to the expedition by the famous cabinet-maker E.J.Ruhlmann (fig.5). The impact of the paintings in this unique setting was spectacular. On a visit to Haardt's apartment in June 1926 where he encountered Yakovlev's work for the first time, the Vogue journalist Jean Galloti remarked, 'Once you have seen his paintings ... the impression they make will never leave you.'

We are grateful to Caroline Haardt de la Baume for writing this note.

To be included in the forthcoming Alexander Yakovlev catalogue raisonné being prepared by Caroline Haardt de La Baume.