Russian Pictures

Russian Pictures

View full screen - View 1 of Lot 65. Set Design for The Merchant of Venice.

Property from a Private Collection, United States

Alexander Nikolaevich Benois

Set Design for The Merchant of Venice

Auction Closed

December 1, 03:47 PM GMT

Estimate

4,000 - 6,000 GBP

Lot Details

Description

Property from a Private Collection, United States

Alexander Nikolaevich Benois

1870 - 1960

Set Design for The Merchant of Venice


signed in Cyrillic and dated 1920 l.l.

watercolour over pencil on paper

Sheet: 38.5 by 63cm, 15¼ by 24¾in.

Framed: 64.5 by 88cm, 25½ by 34½in.

Acquired by the grandparents of the present owner in Paris in the late 1920s
The present set design relates to the 1920 Bolshoi Drama Theatre production of William Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice, designed and directed by Benois. Founded in 1918, in revolutionary Petrograd at the initiative of Maxim Gorky and Maria Andreeva, the Bolshoi Drama Theatre was conceived as a Soviet theatre of the classical repertoire, focusing on three main genres - tragedy, romantic drama and Commedia dell'arte, all of which later became classics of the Soviet theatre. Benois joined the theatre as a director and stage designer in October 1919, gradually turning it into an outpost of the World of Art movement.