Alexandre Iacovleff

Vose Galleries, Boston
William Charles and Edith Whiting Thompson, North Attleboro
Attleboro Arts Museum, Attleboro (acquired as a gift from the above in 1957)

Paris, l'Hôtel Charpentier, Alexandre Iacovleff, May-June 1933
New York, Knoedler Galleries, Alexandre Iacovleff, circa February 1936
Possibly, Boston, Museum of Fine Arts, Alexandre Iacovleff, April-May 1937
Attleboro, Attleboro Arts Museum, on display during the 1950s

Robert de Beauplan, "La Croisiére Jaune," l'Illustration, Paris, June 3, 1933, pp. 52 and 54, illustrated
Alexandre Iacovleff, Dessins et Peintures d'Asie, Paris, 1934, plate 19, illustrated
Alexandre Iacovleff, Faces and Fashions of Asia's Changeless Tribes, The National Geographic Magazine, Washington D.C., January 1936, vol. 69, no. 1, illustrated
Knoedler Galleries, Alexandre Iacovleff, New York, 1936, no. 9
Henry McBride, "Paintings by Iacovleff," New York Sun, New York, February 15, 1936
Caroline Haardt de la Baume, Alexandre Iacovleff: L'Artiste Voyageur, Paris: Flammarion, 2000, pp. 124 and 150, illustrated

Under a Kirghiz Tent is a rediscovered masterpiece that comes to auction from the Attleboro Arts Museum in Attleboro, Massachusetts. Iacovleff was invited to become head of the painting department at the Boston Museum School in 1934 (two years after painting Under a Kirghiz Tent) and as a result, there are numerous works by Iacovleff in private and public collections throughout Massachusetts. Additionally, Vose Galleries in Boston represented Iacovleff and later, his estate. W. Charles Thompson, the original donor of Under a Kirghiz Tent to the Attleboro Arts Museum, was the grandson of Seth M. Vose and nephew of Robert C. Vose and an active salesman for Vose Galleries for forty-eight years. According to Robert C. Vose Jr., W. Charles Thompson lived in North Attleboro for his entire life and commuted to Boston for work. His integral involvement with Vose Galleries resulted in important exhibitions of major American artists ranging from Abbott Graves to Childe Hassam (Robert C. Vose, Jr., "Boston's Vose Galleries: A Family Affair," Archives of American Art, vol. 21, no. 1, 1981, p.10). Iacovleff had an incredible following in Boston and he lived and worked there for three years before returning to Paris in 1937.

Prior to arriving in the United States, Iacovleff participated in an overland journey across the Asian continent with the Citroën expedition, La Croisière Jaune, led by friend Georges-Marie Haardt. Four years earlier, Iacovleff served as one of the members of the Citroën expedition to Africa. The combined expeditions resulted in extraordinary numbers of sketches and paintings, introducing the West to various cultures, customs and diverse landscapes with which they were wholly unfamiliar at the time. La Croisière Jaune expedition departed in April 1931 and travelled through countries and regions that included Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, the foothills of the Himalayas, China and Indochina. Iacovleff played a seminal role in the preparation of this journey and sketched and painted continuously throughout its duration, culminating in over 500 works of art.

Evidently impressed by the Kirghiz people he encountered in the westernmost region of Chinese Turkestan, Iacovleff portrayed them and their iconographic tents (or yurts) in multiple compositions. Other members of the Citroën expedition retained a tent as ethnographic evidence along with documentary photographs and various Kirghiz textiles and tools, which were later exhibited at L'Exposition Citroën at the Place de l'Europe in Paris in 1932. Many of Iacovleff's paintings were also included in this exhibition, probably including Under a Kirghiz Tent. The painting was definitely included in his 1933 exhibition at l'Hôtel Charpentier.

Iacovleff's incredible works from this period illustrate his tremendous facility as a draughtsman and underscore his uncanny ability to capture likeness and character. From the dramatic landscape of his Kirghiz Encampment to the colourful and intimate gathering in Under a Kirghiz Tent, Iacovleff's artistic wizardry led critics to describe his Croisière Jaune output as his most accomplished and astonishing.