This is one of two photographs of the Manager/French Manager in a collection of 27 glass negatives of the ballet Parade, taken by the photographer Lachman. Parade was first staged by Diaghilev's Ballets Russes at the Théâtre du Châtelet, Paris, in 1917. It had a libretto by Jean Cocteau, music by ESatie, and costumes and sets designed by Pablo Picasso and choreography by Léonide Massine.

The Dancer who opens the action was originally called ‘The Manager’ or ‘The Manager in Evening Dress’ but is now generally referred to as the French Manager. He was created by Léon Woizikowsky Significantly he ‘wears’ a stiff, white-fronted evening shirt and top hat and the trees on the back of his construction evoke leafy Parisian boulevards. In Beaumont’s words, he was ‘a wooden head and body poised on human legs. The head is formed by a horizontal flange-like arrangement of thin sheets of wood on one of which is placed a strip of card, twisted to suggest a moustache. The body resembles a rectangular box at the back of which is fixed a house; the legs are clothed in black breeches and shoes with white woollen stockings stretched over the most preposterous calves. From each shoulder hangs a flattened arm; one serves to support and enormous clay pipe at which the figure puffs contentedly, the other a white cane.’

Photographs of any Diaghilev ballets, especially from the post 1914 period are extremely rare, partly because, for all his promotional skills, Diaghilev did not ensure that regular or comprehensive photographic records were made. There are several negatives in this collection which have never been published or are very rarely seen.