Kabuki Actor (Study)

This sanguine and charcoal study on paper depicts an unidentified Tokyo kabuki actor of the late Taishō period in head-and-shoulders view, captured in the elaborate stage make-up and wig of one of his repertory roles. The drawing belongs to the working portion of Iacovleff's Japanese cycle — that is, the studies he produced backstage and during rehearsals at the Imperial Theatre and the Kabuki-za, as preparation for the more elaborately worked finished portraits of named actors such as Nakamura Utaemon V and Ichimura Uzaemon XV. The handling shows Iacovleff's characteristic combination of confident linear contour and broadly worked chalk modelling, with particular attention paid to the precise registration of the elaborate kabuki make-up — the white kumadori base, the red and black accent lines, the carefully drawn brows and lip line — that announced the character type to the audience. The drawing is one of a substantial group of unsigned and unidentified studies that survive from the Tokyo period and provides a valuable insight into Iacovleff's working method, in which the finished portraits we now know were preceded by dozens of comparable studies from life.