Russian Art Week: Bonhams turns to the opulent costumes of the 110-year-old Ballets Russes

Ballets russes Natalia Goncharova
Bonhams is staging an exhibition accompanied by musical performances of rare costumes designed by artists such as Natalia Goncharova  Credit: Courtesy of Galerie Gmurzynska

London is warming up for Russian Art Week – a week of Russian art and, importantly, works of art sales and other cultural events that takes place in June.

But before that, as a prelude opening next Tuesday, Bonhams is staging an exhibition accompanied by musical performances of rare costumes designed by artists such as Natalia Goncharova and Alexander Golovin for Serge Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes which is celebrating its 110th anniversary.

As provenance has become so crucial in the authentication of early 20th century Russian modernist art, it is worth looking at where these costumes have been. After Diaghilev died in 1929, they were inherited by the de Basil Ballets Russes, run by a former Cossack soldier, the self-styled ‘Colonel’ Wassily de Basil (though there is no proof he was actually a colonel). When de Basil died in 1951, the company, which was based in Monte Carlo, ceased to exist and the costumes were consigned to storage.

They next saw light of day in a series of auctions at Sotheby’s. Julian Barran, a private dealer specialising in Ballets Russes material, was a porter at the first sale held at the Scala Theatre in 1968. As he recalls, the costumes were grouped, up to six in a lot, and sold for between £100 and £200. Among the buyers was the actress, Vanessa Redgrave and Barran’s parents.

As Sotheby’s chairman, Peter Wilson, was conducting the sale, he would theatrically announce prestigious buyers – ‘sold to the Los Angeles County Museum… the Theatre Museum…the Victoria and Albert Museum…’ and so on. When he sold to the Barrans, Julian’s father, David, soon to be chairman of Shell and knighted, would pipe up: ‘Sold to the Brent Eleigh Dressing-Up Box!’

Ballets russes Alexander Golovin
Costume for a princess in The Firebird. Designed by Alexander Golovin Credit: Collection of Olga and Ivor Mazure

The Barrans kept their collection at their Suffolk home, Brent Eleigh Hall, where, like Redgrave, they were prone to wearing the costumes at parties. In the Daily Telegraph’s 2002 obituary for David Barran it was noted that, having come from a line of cloth merchants, he was a skilled embroiderer and that “in the late 1960s he abandoned dinner jackets at home in favour of embroidered kaftans – some of them originally costumes for the Diaghilev Ballet, which Barran’s wife had bought at auction”.

After his father died, Julian sold some of his parents’ Russian Ballet costumes to Russian works of art dealers, Olga and Ivor Mazure, who have made the loan to Bonhams. Olga is a former curator of the Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg and developed a passion for such things. “It started when I found a pair of crumpled old black ballet shoes in a trunk of things my husband had acquired before we got married,” she says.

“On them was a faded label. When I showed it to Alexander Shuvalov, the director of the Theatre Museum, he deciphered it as having belonged to Tamara Karsavina who danced Columbine in Carnival for Diaghilev.” She then found some costumes designed by Matisse and became hooked.

“They are beautiful but fragile,” she says of the costumes. A dress designed for a Princess, in the exhibition, for instance, is made of fine wool with painted and embroidered decoration. “When we found it,” Olga recalls “it had suffered extensive insect and rodent damage and it took us two years to restore. We would never wear them now.”

Ballets russes alexander golovin 
Costume for a guard in The Firebird. Designed by Alexander Golovin Credit: Collection of Olga and Ivor Mazure

The Mazure’s collection now includes about 40 costumes, the largest private collection of Ballets Russes costumes in the world. Nine were worn for The Firebird, first performed in Paris in June 1910 with music by Stravinsky, and these are the costumes that have been selected for the Bonhams show.

As to their value, Barran says that in 2009 he sold a Matisse designed costume for £60,000 to the Nouveau Musee National Monaco, and some designed by Bakst sold for between £10,000 and £15,000.

At Bonhams, the Mazure collection is accompanied by some lively Russian Ballet costume drawings by Sergei Sudeikin (about £1,500 each). Signed, but not dated, they are for Diaghilev’s ballets, The Sleeping Beauty and The Fairy Doll, and are being sold by The Bretforton Theatre Room in Worcestershire.

The Theatre Room itself has an interesting pedigree. Founded 40 years ago in a medieval barn by RAF serviceman and Shakespearean actor, James Wellman, and his partner, David Swift, a chef and then antiques dealer, the theatre was run from their kitchen table while privately they collected Ballets Russes designs. Since both died recently, a trust was formed and the designs are being sold to fund essential building repairs.

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