The Russian Ballet in Western Europe 1909-1920

The Russian Ballet in Western Europe 1909-1920, W. A. Propert, with a chapter on the music by Eugene Goossens. — London, John Lane The Bodley Head Limited, 1921.
Folio (325 x 250 mm). XV introduction, 132 pp. With 63 mostly colored plates hors-text, among which are 5 portraits and 58 laminated plates on thick gray paper. The title page and tail pieces in red and black are also by Goncharova. The plates from original drawings by Goncharova, Picasso, Derain, Matisse, J. E. Blanche, Sert, Bakst, Benois, Fedorovskiy, Golovin, Larionov, Roerich, Serov and Sudeikin.
Edition is limited to 500 copies for sale in Great Britain and additional 450 copies in the US.

Title pages. Courtesy of Shapero Rare Books.

This “first full-scale critical appraisal of Diaghilev’s enterprise” was prepared because, according to Propert, indeed “there exists no printed record of [Diaghilev’s Ballet] work as a whole.” The Met museum has the following introduction to its copy in the collection: “In 1920, the New York gallery Knoedler & Co. organized exhibitions of the designs of Leon Bakst, and a first retrospective of the Russian Ballet in Western Europe was published in London in 1921. Celebrated in particular was the company’s ability to transport its audiences to a world of fantasy and wonderment. This experience was greatly welcomed at a time when Europe and the United States were recovering from the devastation of World War I (1914-18).”

Decorating the textual part of the edition, Goncharova uses some of her own red and black woodcut vignettes from Amari’s Transparent Shadows and Forms (1920) and occasionally repeats them throughout the volume.

At the same time, I found at PY – Shapero Rare Books two very interesting original watercolors – Goncharova’s alternative designs for the cover of the present edition (numbered 2 and 4 by Goncharova in pencil). In the final version of the book cover, we see that the lavish floral motives change their form and acquire an image of a firebird with a woman’s head.