Costume design for an Oriental dancer

Details

ATTRIBUTED TO LÉON BAKST (1866-1924)
Costume design for an Oriental dancer
with signature and date 'Bakst/1910' (lower right)
pencil, watercolor and gouache, heightened with gold, on paper
13 5/8 x 9 7/8 in. (34.5 x 25 cm.)

Provenance

Anonymous sale; Christie's, London, 10 October 1990, lot 375 as 'Costume design for Cleopatra - a Dancer'.
Charles Spencer Esq. (1920-2010), London.
with The Fine Art Society, London, November 1995.
Acquired from the above by Ann and Gordon Getty in November 1995.

Literature

C. Spencer, Léon Bakst and the Ballets Russes, London, 1995, illustrated p. 71, listed p. 220, no. 109.
C. Spencer, Bakst in Greece, Athens, 2009, illustrated p. 119 (erroneously listed as from the Lobanov-Rostovsky Collection).

Exhibited

Possibly, London, The Fine Art Society, Bakst and the Ballets Russes, 13 November-15 December 1995.

Conditions of sale

Brought to you by

Elizabeth Seigel Vice President, Specialist, Head of Private and Iconic Collections

eseigel@christies.com +1 212 484 4812

Lot Essay

This work was previously described by Charles Spencer as a costume design for the renowned dancer Ida Rubinstein (1883-1960) who starred in the principal role of Sergei Diaghilev’s (1872-1929) Ballets Russes ballet Cleopatra. The ballet premiered on 2 June 1909 at the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris with choreography by Michel Fokine (1880-1942) and designs by Léon Bakst.

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