Yakovlev painting fetches 2.5 million pounds

The painting “Titi and Naranghe, daughters of Chief Eki Bondo” by Alexander Yakovlev (also known as Alexandre Iacovleff) went under the hammer at Sotheby’s in England this week, fetching a record price of more than 2.5 million pounds, far exceeding expectations.
The St. Petersburg-born painter (1887-1938) became a French citizen and spent most of his life working in France, becoming especially well known for his works featuring exotic locations, such as Africa, Afghanistan, Syria, Mongolia and China.
The painting originally belonged to Georges-Marie Haardt, general director of the car-maker Citroen, which organized an automobile expedition in Africa in 1924-1925. The painter took part in the expedition, and the auctioned work was one of those painted immediately after the trip. It was initially expected to go for about 700,000-900,000 pounds. Three other works by Yakovlev surpassed the million-pound mark. Over a hundred works of Yakovlev were on auctioned off this time, as a part of Sotheby’s summer Russian sales series.