The Battle (Japanese Theatre)

This oil on canvas of approximately 60.5 by 95.5 cm depicts a battle scene from the kabuki stage, showing armoured warriors in the dramatic pose of stage combat (tate). The painting is one of the most ambitious of Iacovleff's Japanese theatrical pictures and the principal large-format response within his Far Eastern mission to the jidaimono (history play) repertoire that dominated the Tokyo programme during his stay. The composition is organised around the formalised choreography of stage combat as practised by the actor lines of the Ichikawa Danjūrō and Onoe Kikugorō houses, with the figures arranged in the deliberate spiralling pose that the elaborate katchū-shi (armour-makers) and tate-shi (combat directors) of the Tokyo theatres developed for the great battle plays of the repertory — Kanjinchō, the Soga brothers cycle, Chūshingura. Iacovleff places the action against a deliberately spare neutral ground that recalls the empty stages of the kabuki theatres and concentrates the viewer's attention on the figures themselves, their armour, their stage make-up and the heightened formal pose of the warriors. The painting represents Iacovleff's most sustained large-format engagement with the kabuki stage and is among the most important of his Japanese subjects.