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Léon Bakst Collection
Throughout the page that follows, we have presented vintage images from the Russian painter and scene- and costume-designer, Léon Bakst.
We have developed a range of Giftware that includes images reproduced from many of the 1st Edition plates in our collection to ensure the most accurate form, line and colour possible. We have utilised a high definition capture and reproduction technique for the images - in contrast to the low definition representation necessary for this website. The illustrations are available as cards, infants' clothing, T-shirts and unmatted, matted or framed prints (8x6", 10x8", 12x10", 15x10" and 30 x 20" images sizes). Pricing starts at US$4 for single Gift Cards (US$18 for select packs of 6) and 10 x 8" prints (double-matted and framed) begin at US$60. Further details on those reproduction images are available at the Giftware section of this site.
Should you wish to discuss an order, please contact us at ThePeople@SpiritoftheAges.com referencing your request with the Stock Code of the plate, or plates in question and a brief description (and rest assured, we do accept payment through PayPal).
In the meantime, enjoy browsing our selection of genuine vintage and antique plates.
The Artwork of Léon Bakst Léon Bakst (1866-1924), born Lev Rosenberg, was a Russian painter and designer for the theatre. His formal training was undertaken at the St Petersburg Academy of Arts, during which time he also worked part-time as a book illustrator.
At the time of his first exhibition in 1889, he took the pseudonym Léon Bakst - a name derived from a combination of his first name, Lev, and his grandmother's maiden name, Baxter.
"Léon Bakst's Designs for Scenery and Costume" (The International Studio, 1913)
In 1913, The International Studio, published an article by Gerald C Siordet - "Léon Bakst's Designs for Scenery and Costume" - accompanied by a number of colour images. Within the article, Siordet undertakes a survey of Bakst's career to date, in addition to providing a critique of his artistic approach and technique. A portion of Siordet's article is reproduced below.
Art, as he says, is a plaything, and an artist's work will be good only when it has been great fun doing it. Here is the real secret of his appeal. Grant him whatever fine and far-fetched qualities you will - and there is plenty enough to his credit - these designs of his charm because, behind all the intervening processes of knowledge and calculation, they reveal the enjoyment of the child, exultant in the possession of paint-box and brushes, greatly daring to draw monsters, or princesses, or cities of an enchanted world.
That they should thus keep the freshness and sparkle of spontaneity is the more remarkable when one considers the amount of solid learning that has gone to the designing of such a series of costumes as enrich the ballets of Schéhérazade, Le Dieu Bleu, Hélène de Sparte, or Signor d'Annunzio's mediævalist experiments, S Sebastien and Pisanelle. Bakst is a real student, a genuine scholar in costume. His designs are no mere archæological resuscitations of the wardrobes of the past; neither are they the summary, impressionistic stock-in-trade of the quick-change artist. He is, indeed, a kind of bright, particular chameleon. He will settle into the strange, distorted glamour of the East, or the simple graces of archaic Greece, or the fierce, gay medley of the Middle Ages, and presently will bring you forth not dresses merely but personages who move with ease and certainty each in his own time, and yet retain the stamp of their creator.
This particular receptivity of mind, which at the same time recreates and rearranges, is of all qualities that most fitted to adapt itself to the art of the theatre, in which scenery and costume are most telling only when they make no attempt to conceal, rather welcome, the presence of conscious recognised artifice - in fact, when the art that makes them is considered as itself a plaything. It is hardly possible to find a single design by Bakst which is not from this point of view "amusing".
Serge de Diaghileff's Ballet Russe (Metropolitan Ballet Company, Inc., 1916)
On the occasion of Serge de Diaghileff's Ballet Russe tour of America during 1916, the Metropolitan Ballet Company produced a Souvenir Program containing illustrations by Léon Bakst and others.
Highlighted work from Bakst includes costumes from Schéhérazade, La Dieu Bleu, Narcisse, L'Après-Midi D'Un Faune and Peri.
The itinerary of that tour is outlined in the following text from that Program:
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