Costume design for 'Sadko': Man with embroidered shirt and red boots

Details

LÉON BAKST (1866-1924)
Costume design for 'Sadko': Man with embroidered shirt and red boots
signed 'bakst' (lower left)
pencil and gouache, heightened with silver, on paper
19 x 12 7/8 in. (48.3 x 32.8 cm.)
Executed circa 1917

Provenance

Georges Rasamatt (1899-1991), Paris.
Anonymous sale; Sotheby's, London, 14 December 1995, lot 294.
Acquired at the above sale by Ann and Gordon Getty.

Literature

L. Reau et al., Inedited works of Bakst, New York, 1927, illustrated plate XXV as 'A costume for the opera Sadko'.
C. Einstein, Léon Bakst, Berlin, 1928, illustrated plate 24 as 'Ein Kostümentwurf für die Oper Sadko'.
E. Bespalova, Bakst v Parizhe [Bakst in Paris], Moscow, 2016, illustrated p. 144, listed p. 250, no. 139.

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 costume design of a man in an embroidered shirt and red boots was for a character in the unrealized 1917 production of the opera Sadko. Bakst also used this design with slightly different colors and shirt embroidery for the character 'Le bouffon russe' colloquially known as 'Innocent Ivan' in the 1921 production of La Belle au Bois dormant [The Sleeping Princess] as seen in M. de Brunoff (ed.), L’oeuvre de Léon Bakst pour la Belle aux Bois Dormant, Paris, 1922, pl. 24, which is now held in the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.
We are grateful to Elena Bespalova, art historian and researcher, for her assistance with cataloging lots 639-641, 643-645 and 653-655.

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