DOI Heft:
No. 247 (October 1913)
DOI Artikel:Siordet, Gerald C.: Leon Bakst's designs for scenery and costume
DOI Seite / Zitierlink: https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.21208#0025
THE STUDIO
Leon bakst’s designs for
SCENERY AND COSTUME.
Leon Bakst, about whom so much has
been talked and written during the last few years in
connection with the art of the theatre, was born in
St. Petersburg in the year 1868. Passing through
the academic course of art training in that city, he
went to Paris to study in 1895, and on his return to
Russia won such success as a painter of portraits
and official pictures as to be appointed to the
position of painter to the Imperial family. But
a realistic subject-picture, a Pietci, in which the
artist presented the persons of our Lord and His
Mother under the guise of peasants, and attempted
to depict without restraint the most violent
affections of grief in the principal figures, was found
so displeasing to the committee of the Academy to
which it was submitted for exhibition that, though
the work was hung, it was scored from corner to
corner with bands of white chalk. The artist
withdrew the picture: and the insult, combined
with the representations of a little group of friends
whose belief in his particular genius had been
aroused by the success of a number of experiments
in the designing of decoration and stage scenery
and costume, decided him to break with official
patronage and to follow his own bent. The
secession of the younger school of Russian dancing,
personified in the art of Nijinsky, provided him
with the very opportunity he was seeking; he left
Russia, staked his artistic interests on the new
venture, and provided the ballets with a series of
settings and costumes that have inestimably en-
riched the performances of the Russian dancers
and have been the means of his acquiring a great
artistic reputation for himself.
Yet I am not at all sure that in England, at any
rate, the theatrical work of Leon Bakst has not been
treated with greater solemnity than he himself
would consider appropriate. The Englishman in
art has been always rather like the old lady and
DESIGN FOR SCENERY, “ DAPHNIS AND CHLOE ”
LX. No. 247.—October 1913
BY L^ON BAKST
3
Leon bakst’s designs for
SCENERY AND COSTUME.
Leon Bakst, about whom so much has
been talked and written during the last few years in
connection with the art of the theatre, was born in
St. Petersburg in the year 1868. Passing through
the academic course of art training in that city, he
went to Paris to study in 1895, and on his return to
Russia won such success as a painter of portraits
and official pictures as to be appointed to the
position of painter to the Imperial family. But
a realistic subject-picture, a Pietci, in which the
artist presented the persons of our Lord and His
Mother under the guise of peasants, and attempted
to depict without restraint the most violent
affections of grief in the principal figures, was found
so displeasing to the committee of the Academy to
which it was submitted for exhibition that, though
the work was hung, it was scored from corner to
corner with bands of white chalk. The artist
withdrew the picture: and the insult, combined
with the representations of a little group of friends
whose belief in his particular genius had been
aroused by the success of a number of experiments
in the designing of decoration and stage scenery
and costume, decided him to break with official
patronage and to follow his own bent. The
secession of the younger school of Russian dancing,
personified in the art of Nijinsky, provided him
with the very opportunity he was seeking; he left
Russia, staked his artistic interests on the new
venture, and provided the ballets with a series of
settings and costumes that have inestimably en-
riched the performances of the Russian dancers
and have been the means of his acquiring a great
artistic reputation for himself.
Yet I am not at all sure that in England, at any
rate, the theatrical work of Leon Bakst has not been
treated with greater solemnity than he himself
would consider appropriate. The Englishman in
art has been always rather like the old lady and
DESIGN FOR SCENERY, “ DAPHNIS AND CHLOE ”
LX. No. 247.—October 1913
BY L^ON BAKST
3