Japanese Girl

Dated 1919 and approximately 56.5 by 51 cm, this sepia drawing on paper depicts a young Japanese woman of the ordinary urban classes in informal kimono and obi. The work belongs to the substantial sub-series within the Far Eastern mission of head-and-shoulders portraits of non-theatrical Japanese sitters, including geisha, female employees of the inns and restaurants Iacovleff frequented, and the daughters of Tokyo intellectual and artistic households that received him during his stay. The handling is characteristic of his late-Tokyo period: the contour drawn with the precise linear vocabulary derived from Kardovsky, the face modelled with the soft chalk vocabulary that allowed Iacovleff to record both the particularity of the individual sitter and the cultural conventions of dress and hairdressing without the schematism that affected lesser Western depictions of Japanese subjects. The work is a strong example of the documentary impulse that runs through the Japanese cycle and a useful corrective to the better-known theatrical portraits, demonstrating Iacovleff's interest in the everyday city as well as the celebrated stage.