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Leon Bakst

Design for the costume of the Fiancé in Le Dieu bleu, 1911

Description

Maker

  • Leon Bakst, 1866-1924, Russian

Title

Design for the costume of the Fiancé in Le Dieu bleu

Year

1911

Medium

Crayon, watercolor, and metallic paint on laid paper mounted to board

Materials/Techniques

Materials

  • watercolor

Supports

  • laid paper

Dimensions

28.4 x 20.6 cm (11 3/16 x 8 1/8 inches)

Signature / Inscription / Marks

Inscribed in graphite: "Bakst 1911" and "Dieu Bleu/ Le Fiancé"

Type

  • Works on Paper,
  • Drawings and Watercolors

Credit

Gift of Mrs. Gustav Radeke

Object Number

14.388

Exhibition History

Exhibition History

From Dürer to Van Gogh

June 5 - October 26, 2008

Léon Bakst was a scene painter and costume designer under the great director of the Ballets Russes, Sergei Diaghilev. In 1914, art dealer Martin Birnbaum organized the first American showing of Bakst’s works in New York, featuring watercolors and three-dimensional stage mock-ups, to great success. Mrs. Eliza Radeke must have purchased this wonderfully off-center costume study from that exhibition. Bakst depicted the character of the fiancé from The Blue God (Le Dieu Bleu), a ballet choreographed by Michel Fokine and written by Jean Cocteau. The ballet premiered in Paris in 1912. It tells the story of a girl who tries to dissuade her fiancé from becoming a priest and is thereafter tormented by demons; but she is eventually saved by the Blue God, a part performed by Vaslaw Nijinsky, the greatest male dancer of his time. Fokine’s choreography and Bakst’s costumes drew upon Siamese dance and Hindu sculpture.

From Bastille to Beaubourg

July 7 - August 26, 1989

Stage Designs by Donald M. Oenslager

July 8 - August 28, 1988

Use

The images on this website can enable discovery and collaboration and support new scholarship, and we encourage their use. This object is in the public domain (CC0 1.0). This object is Design for the costume of the Fiancé in Le Dieu bleu with the accession number of 14.388. To request high-resolution files or new photography, please send an email to imagerequest@risd.edu and include your name and the object's accession number.

Feedback

We view our online collection as a living documents, and our records are frequently revised and enhanced. If you have additional information or have spotted an error, please send feedback to curatorial@risd.edu.

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