Leon Bakst and the Ballets Russes

Charles Spencer.

Academy Editions. London. 1995. Revised and expanded edition. First published in 1973. Hardback, quarto; black cloth-bound boards, dust jacket. 228 pages. Over 330 illustrations, including 60 in colour. English. 315 x 265mm. 1.9kg. 9781854903488. Very good, in very good dust jacket; slight marks to endpapers; slight shelf wear to jacket.

Charles Spencer's biography of Leon Bakst, written in 1973, was the first full-length study of the artist since his death in 1924. The text from the biography has been completely rewritten here and broadened to place Bakst's work in the context of the Ballets Russes and Russian culture at the beginning of the twentieth century. A cast of characters supports Bakst, amongst them Diaghilev, Pavlova, Nijinsky, Proust, Marchesa Casati and Erte.