Collecting the Ballets Russes

One of my favourite areas of collecting and something we’ve always had a particular interest in here at Shapero is the Ballets Russes. It’s a great area to focus on as it includes some of the most important creative breakthroughs of the early twentieth century and made an incredible impact on the development of art, music, design and dance.

I think it’s an important subject matter in terms of how much it revolutionised theatre but it’s also wonderfully visual and the collecting scope is broad. There’s ephemera, music scores, limited edition books and on the higher end of the scale, original drawings for costume and stage designs. One can start small and there’s always the chance of finding objects which are more unusual or unique.

For example, just to focus on three of the stars of the Ballets Russes, Nijinsky, Pavlova and Karsavina we have a few very collectable items at 94 New Bond Street right now.

This is a wonderful large original watercolour of Nijinsky as Harlequin in Le Carnaval by one of the most iconic artists of the Art Deco era, Georges Lepape. Known primarily as a fashion illustrator, Lepape was drawn to the vibrant colour palettes of the Ballets Russes, producing costume and set designs, as well as theatre programmes.  Diaghilev’s troupe helped inspire his fashion designs, creating a ground-breaking new look with dramatic eye makeup and orientalist style turbans which defined the era.

Another Art Deco artist inspired by the Ballets Russes was George Barbier. He produced this limited-edition album of pochoir prints dedicated to the prima ballerina Tamara Karsavina in 1914. It’s a beautifully produced work and the plates were designed to ‘stir the emotion and delight the eye of the viewer, not to document the performance’ (Ray).

 Karsavina created iconic lead roles for some of the most famous ballets such as The Firebird, Le Spectre de la Rose and Petrushka, dancing alongside Nijinsky before his departure from the troupe. After she left the Ballets Russes, she settled in England and founded the Royal Academy of Dance, bringing her knowledge of the Imperial method from Russian to London. This monograph on the dancer is one of just 120 copies on handmade paper signed by the ballerina. It has the lovely original deluxe binding featuring a vellum spine with small gilt motifs of a dancer which remind me of The Rite of Spring.

Perhaps the most famous dancer of the troupe, and arguably even the most famous ballet dancer of all time is Anna Pavlova. She was already well known before the Ballets Russes’ inception but her association with Diaghilev and prolific touring around the world helped propel her to international stardom. This is the first monograph on Pavlova and is also signed by her. It is richly illustrated with photographs and stage and costume designs by Bakst amongst others. 

 And as an example of something more unusual, we have a collection of original ballet scores from Anna Pavlova’s own collection. They’re all bound in her own nominative cloth bindings and some feature pencil annotations by the dancer herself.