Natalia Sergeevna Goncharova

A gift from the artist to Vladimir Bashkirov
Gifted from the above to Ivo Forde

Paris, Sotheby's Galerie Charpentier, Danser vers la Gloire: l'Age d'or des ballets russes, 17-23 September 2008, no.63

Exhibition catalogue Danser vers la Gloire: l'Age d'or des ballets russes, 2008, p.30 no.63 (illustrated)

The paper has been extended by 9cm along the bottom edge and there is a tear to the left hand edge and an area of loss approx 2cm in diameter to the lower centre. The sheet is slightly discoloured with some staining to the lower edges. There are 2 small patches of paper to the upper portion of the work, where the artist has corrected her initial design. The pigments are a little faded. Held in a gold painted wooden frame and behind glass. Unexamined out of frame.
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One of the staples in the repertoire of the Ballets Russes, Firebird should have been part of the very first ballet season presented by Serge Diaghilev in Paris, in 1909. However, delays with the preparation of the score, first entrusted to Anatoly Liadov and then reassigned to Igor Stravinsky prevented its inclusion that year, and caused it to have a slightly mixed scenography at its 1910 premiere. Since Firebird had already been announced for 1909, something of that name had to be performed, so Bakst created costumes for the Firebird and the Prince, which were used to perform the bluebird pas de deux from Marius Petipa's Sleeping Beauty. The following year they, together with an outfit for the Princess were integrated with sets and costumes designed by Aleksandr Golovin. After some of these were damaged in storage in 1922, Diaghilev opted for an entirely new scenography, instead of having the unusable items recreated based on the original drawings. He commissioned Natalia Goncharova to redesign the production, which premiered in 1926. In comparison to the Golovine/Bakst version, hers was more stylized, drawing on the visual imagery of the lubok, a kind of Russian folk print. The decors were highly schematic, as in this sketch of the fairytale city, which formed the backdrop of the ballet's second act. If one looks carefully at this unflinchingly decorative design one realizes that not a single building in this imaginary town fails to be topped by a cupola, which would in everyday reality be very bizarre, but in the context of the theatre, creates a remarkable graphic effect. On stage, and under lights, the metallic paint of the cupolae would be much more yellow and would interact vividly with the blues, reds and greens of the walls and sky.

We are grateful to Anna Winestein, of St.Catherine's College, Oxford, and Associate Director of the Ballets Russes 2009 festival, for providing this note