Alexander Nikolaevich Benois

There is some light wear to the paint surface across the top of the composition and creasing in the corners with associated paint loss. There are pinholes to the four corners. The colours are fairly strong. Held in a dark painted wooden frame and under glass.
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NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE CATALOGUE."

INTRO TO PREVIOUS PAGE: "I consider myself particularly fortunate that at a time when the soul thirsts for life-giving impressions in art I should have found our St Petersburg ballet at its zenith,"  writes Benois in the epilogue to his 'Reminiscences of the Russian Ballet'. The extraordinary combination of flourishing dancers, designers, the Imperial Theatre School, composers such as Tchaikovsky – 'all this I snatched at with the greed of youth, at the very moment of its origin'. But as Benois grew up, he saw a rapid decline in the Russian ballet so painful to watch that it drove him and his circle to revive it abroad. '"What we brought to Paris was not the decadent Imperial Ballet, but something entirely separate – our own ballet, a ballet that corresponded with our ideals, that resuscitated the joys of our youth...".

 

As Benois points out, the soil of Russia had proved remarkably receptive, and the ballet was no exception: it was not a purely national product, but an amalgamation of foreign talents. "There is no doubt", he continues, "had we come to Europe only as representatives of something exotic, we would still have created a sensation. But such a success would have been less significant and stable. The fact that we had shown Europe something European, something that had been miraculously preserved in our country and then transfigured and revived, gave our productions a particular significance that contributed largely to our success".

 

The offered set and costume designs are superb examples of the enchantment and vitality that Benois and Diaghilev hoped to revive.

NOTE TO LOT 828

'The Ballets Russes themselves would never have seen the light of day had not the Belle au Bois Dormant awakened in a group of Russian youths a fiery enthusiasm that developed into a kind of frenzy.'
When it was first staged in St Petersburg in 1890, Benois returned again and again, enraptured by Tchaikovsky's score which transported him 'from reality into the magic world of fairy tale'. (A.Benois, Reminiscences of the Russian Ballet, London: Putnam,1945, p.127).

'When I try to analyse the feeling that came over me then, it seems to me that I simply could not believe in my own joy; that, subconsciously, I was already completely in the power of something new, but for which, nevertheless, my soul had been waiting for a long, long while" (ibid pp.123-4).