Set for the Ballet 'Giselle'
Watercolour, ink and ink wash.
490 x 630 mm
(19 3/10 x 24 4/5 inches).
Provenance: Maxime Dethomas and thence by descent.
Exhibition: Galeries George Petit, Paris.
St Petersburg 1870 ~ 1960 Paris
Alexandre Benois was a painter, graphic artist, stage designer and writer. His grandfather had fled to Russia during the French Revolution and settled in St. Petersburg. Alexandre was brought up there and received an excellent education, attending the May Gymnasium and the Faculty of Law at the university. He also attended the Academy of Arts for four months (1887-8) and classes at various studios in France, including that of Whistler in 1896. However, as an artist, he regarded himself as self-taught.
In the 1870s and 1880s St. Petersburg was an important centre for drama, the opera and the ballet. Benois inherited a passion for the theatre from his mother and his boyhood dream was to become a stage designer.1 It was Benois who involved Serge Diaghilev in the ballet and helped him with his early artistic projects. Benois then became artistic director of both Diagilev's Ballets Russes (1909-11) and the Moscow Art Theatre (c.1909-14). His work was influenced by both German and French painting and tended to be traditional and eclectic as well as symbolist in atmosphere. He was fascinated by the sophisticated elegance of the court of Louis XIV at Versailles as well as that of Peter the Great in St. Petersburg. Benois's admiration for Versailles was first evident in his sketches for the ballet Le Pavillon d'Armide (1907) and the historical accuracy for which he was noted may be seen in his design for the surviving costumes. Benois's great success in the theatre came through treating both the costumes and the stage sets as an integral part of the whole production. He frequently chose the scene changes as well. His designs for Petrushka (1911) and his other works for the Ballets Russes are the most important of his career.
Our watercolour is one of Benois's set designs for Act II of Diagilev's original and very successful production of the ballet, Giselle, produced in Paris in 1910. The (revised) choreography was by Marius Petipa, the music by Adolphe Adam and Tamara Karsavina and Vaslav Nijinsky danced the principal's roles. In this act the unfaithful nobleman, Count Albrecht, returns to mourn at the grave of Giselle, the peasant girl he so tragically deceived. He arrives at the tomb under cover of darkness, she awakens and, despite the wicked magic of the wilis, they manage to dance together until dawn, hence the light breaking through the trees. There are several other set designs by Benois for both acts of this production 2 and for his two later productions; one in Paris in 1949 and one at La Scala, Milan, in 1950.
Our design and another, much less wooded version of the same scene, were given together by Benois to his friend and working colleague, Maxime Dethomas. The second bears the following inscription on the back of the mount: 'A mon tres cher ami Maxime Dethomas souvenir de mon travail et de mes sentiments d'Amitie Alexandre Benois 1924. Dieu qu'il est infini de ce que je vous aime bien et que je desire que cette horrible aquarelle vous serve de souvenir de son auteur Alexandre Benois'.
1. R.C. Hansen, Scenic and Costume Design for the Ballets Russes, Ann Arbor, The Garland Press, 1985, pp. 17-22.
2. Alexandre Benois, Reminiscences of the Russian Ballet, London, 1942, fig. facing p.70.
