Alexander Evgenievich Yakovlev

The Family of the Sitter
Jean-Pierre Osenat, Fontainebleau, La Tradition Française: Tableaux modernes, 16 April 2000, Lot 15
Sotheby's London, The Russian Sale, 26 May 2004, Lot 251

The canvas has been lined. There is a layer of light surface dirt and the paint surface is thin in areas to the centre. There is craquelure, especially visible to the yellow jersey and the sitter's face. There are vertical lines of craquelure to the central section. UV light reveals retouching to the aforementioned restoration and some crudely applied triangular patches of overpainting along the top edge. There is a line of retouching around the subject's head, to his shoes and to an area approximately 50 by 6cm at its widest point in the lower right hand corner. Further flecks of retouching are also visible in places elsewhere. Held in a gold painted wooden frame. Unexamined out of frame.
"In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective, qualified opinion. Prospective buyers should also refer to any Important Notices regarding this sale, which are printed in the Sale Catalogue.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE CATALOGUE."

Arturo Lopez-Willshaw (1900-1962), known as Arturito, was the son of Arturo Lopez, a rich Chilean Industrialist who had made his fortune in guano, and his first wife, Sara Willshaw. The Lopez family rose to fame in Parisian society during the inter-war years. Close friends of many Russian émigrés including Diaghilev and Stravinsky, they became great patrons of the arts and collected fine art and silverware themselves.

A friend and sponsor of Alexis von Rosenberg, Baron de Rédé (1922-2004), Arturito was a sophisticated aesthete. He lived stylishly, dividing his time between the Hôtel Lambert on the île St. Louis, where he would host his notorious costume balls, the Hôtel de Neuilly and La Gaviota, a yacht decorated entirely in period wood panelling.

It is unknown whether Yakovlev met Lopez through Diaghilev, or as a result of Yakovlev's exhibition of drawings and paintings from the Far East at Galerie Barbazanges. But by the 1920s he had already been invited to château Vosves, the Lopez residence at Seine-en-Marne with its famous water features, as well as to their magnificent town house at Neuilly-sur-Seine.

In Paris, Yakovlev had become a highly sought after portraitist and designer. He was commissioned to complete numerous portraits of the entire Lopez family including this remarkable oil of Lopez's son as well as several portraits of Anna Lopez-Ross, Arturo Lopez's second wife, and of their daughter, Anita.

Depicted in the grounds of Château Vosves and elegantly dressed in 1920s fashions, the youthful Lopez locks eyes with the viewer. This large composition is executed in Yakovlev's favourite palette, a subtle combination of turquoise, ochre and brown. As with similar works in oil from this period, Yakovlev constructs the composition architecturally, with the sitter in the foreground, a tree overhanging a water labyrinth in the middle ground and autumnal foliage in the background. The viewer's gaze focuses initially on the figure, eventually moving away towards the other, skilfully positioned planes. Yakovlev is thus able to enhance the sculptural elegance of his model. Yakovlev replicates this technique with a similar palette and even incorporating the same standing pose with slightly bent knees in Daboa, a composition painted during the Croisière Noire voyage to Africa in 1924.

 

Arturito is immortalised by Alexander Yakovlev as a youthful twenty-three year-old, about to embark on a whirlwind lifestyle of prosperity, luxury and pleasure. The dining room of their Neuilly home was the showcase for a prestigious collection of gold and silverware from the eighteenth century and one of the walls was decorated with a quotation from Ovid's Tristia:

You'll have many friends while you are fortunate; but when the sky clouds over you'll be alone.

It would seem that Yakovlev has conveyed this lucidity in the melancholic gaze of this handsome young man.

We are grateful to Caroline Haardt de la Baume, author of the forthcoming Alexander Yakovlev catalogue raisonné for providing this note.