In luminous pochoir with silver highlights
Publication: Brentano's, New York, 1927.
Among the best representations of Bakst’s costumes for the Ballets Russes, here with the rare dust-jacket in very good condition.
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Bakst’s unpublished drawings, in fine, luminous pochoir plates, and here with the fragile and often missing striking dust jacket.
The prominent artistic director of Serge Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes and one of the foremost theatre designers of European modernism, Leon Bakst (1866-1924) is presented here as a versatile artist and draughtsman. Among the album’s highlights are 20 bright and fresh phototype plates, hand-coloured in pochoir at the atelier of Daniel Jacomet, one of the leaders in this technique. The plates feature Bakst’s costume designs for The Sleeping Princess, Daphnis and Chloe, The Marvellous Night, Fantastic Shop and Boris Godunov among many others. It is worth noting that, among the few folio works celebrating Baskt’s costumes and decors, this is the only one using the pochoir technique for the plates, rendered here in vivid colours, supported with silver highlights for the most striking effect.
The work also includes Bakst’s skilful monochrome nudes and coloured ornate stage sets, accompanied with essays on Bakst (“The Art of Bakst” and “Reminiscences” by Valerian Svetlov), his contribution to the development of modern art in Western Europe (“Leo Bakst, Renovator of the Modern Art” by Louis Réau and “Considerations on Leo Bakst’s Art” by Denis Roche) and his interpretation of music (“Leo Bakst, Illustrator of Music” by A. Tessier).
Item number
2203
Folio (33.5 x 26.5 cm). 127 pp. incl. frontispiece, titles and half-title, [1] p. limitation page, with 30 plates by Bakst, including 20 coloured by pochoir, 5 colour printed and mounted and 5 plain, all with lettered tissue guards, b&w and colour vignettes, headpieces and initials in text.
Binding
Publisher’s white cloth backed boards with Bakst’s vignette to upper cover, original illustrated dust jacket with Bakst’s design; in later? purple marbled slip-case.
Condition
Minimally rubbed at extremities, dust jacket spine restored at ends, edge of lower wrapper along flap crease restored, edges slightly browned, slipcase with light wear; a closed marginal tear restored on pp. 43-44, some light offsetting from colour plates as usual; in general though a fine, fresh example of this attractive work.
[Catalogue of copper money of Chinese, Japanese, Korean Vietnamese and uncertain origins, medals, paper-money, exchange notes, gold and silver bars]
The attractive catalogue of Asian, esp. Chinese numismatics compiled by one of the greatest coin collectors of the early 19th century. A lovely example of the rarer first Russian issue, in a fine Russian binding - a rare book indeed, with more than 60 plates.
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