Kabuki Actor in Role

This sanguine and charcoal drawing on paper depicts a Tokyo kabuki actor in the full stage costume and pose of one of his roles, shown at half-length against a neutral ground. Like the preceding head-and-shoulders study, the work belongs to the larger group of theatrical studies that Iacovleff produced during 1918 and 1919 and that are now identifiable principally by their handling rather than by named sitters or roles. The composition is organised in the disciplined linear vocabulary that Iacovleff carried out of the Imperial Academy and is enhanced by the soft chalk modelling that allowed him both to register the heavy stage make-up of the actor and to suggest the textile pattern and weight of the costume. The work demonstrates the breadth of Iacovleff's engagement with the Tokyo stage — extending well beyond the named portrait drawings of Utaemon V and Uzaemon XV that have entered the literature — and the scale on which he was working during his Far Eastern mission.