Print coloured by hand

Physical description

Against the deep blue backcloth a forest in folklorique/rayonniste style, with fantastic trees and flowers, and, to the left, fantastic creatures in constructivist style and decoration. Left, a 'house' on chicken legs, centre three tall hairy devils in front of which, is a child in Russian folk dress in blue pinks with orange headband facing at far right a hump-backed old woman with a peg attached to left foot. Print coloured by hand. Published 1920s.
Print coloured by hand signed Ethelbert White.
The image is framed by a multiple line border one band of which is coloured green, one orange and one blue.

Date

second half 1920s (Published)

Artist/maker

White, Ethelbert, born 1891 - died 1972 (Artist)

Materials and Techniques

Print coloured by hand in watercolour and gouache on paper

Dimensions

Height: 343 mm, Width: 375 mm

Object history note

The print depicts a scene in Leonide Massine's ballet Children's Tales (Contes Russes), based on various popular Russian folk tales, designed by Mikhail Larionov, music by Liadoff, first produced by Diaghilev Ballets Russes in 1917 (subsequently revised).The scene shows the Little Girl, lost in the forest, taunted by demons drawing her towards Baba-Yaga who waits to devour her. To the left, Baba-Yaga's house on its traditional chicken-legs.
By the mid 1920s, there was an increasing interest in the Diaghilev Ballet and material relating to dance in general. Beaumont had already produced a series of booklets on individual Diaghilev Ballets under the series title Impressions of the Russian Ballet and a number of wooden cut-out Diaghilev dancers in their famous roles. He now decided to produce a series of hand coloured prints of typical scenes from the Diaghilev Ballet repertory. He kept no records of when he began publishing the prints nor how many were produced, although he reckoned about twenty, mostly the work of Adrian Allinson, Ethelbert White and Randolf Schwabe who had also worked on Impressions of the Russian Ballet booklets and the wooden figures, and Eileen Mayo.
In all these works, Beaumont strove to capture the exact moments of the ballet as well as artists' interpretations. Possibly the design of each print followed the painstaking search for accuracy that had characterised the creation of the illustrations for Impressions of the Russian Ballet series, described in Bookseller at the Ballet - choosing the significant moment, watching the ballet night after night to check details of the poses and grouping (not easy when the stage was full of individual dancers and movement), going backstage to sketch scenery and borrow costumes - although some prints appear to be 'composite' rather than specific tableaux.
Most of the hand-colouring for Impressions of the Russian Ballet booklets was the work of Beaumont and his wife, Alice, and it is possible that both were also involved in colouring the prints, although eventually other artists were employed on both projects.

Descriptive line

Print by Ethelbert White of The Little Girl and Baba-Yaga in the forest from Leonide Massine's ballet Children's Tales (Contes Russes), Diaghilev Ballets Russes, 1917.

Bibliographic References (Citation, Note/Abstract, NAL no)

Beaumont, Cyril, Bookseller at the Ballet, Memoirs 1891-1929: London, C. W. Beaumont, London, 1975. 426p., ill. Z325.B35

Materials

Paper; Watercolour; Printing ink; Gouache

Techniques

Hand-colouring; Printing

Collection code

THM