Alexandre Benois

Alexandre (Alexander) Nikolayevich Benois (

Three years later while in

During the first decade of the new century, Benois continued to edit Mir iskusstva, but also pursued his scholarly and artistic interests. He wrote and published several monographs on 19th-century Russian art and Tsarskoye Selo. In 1903, Benois printed his illustrations to Pushkin's poem The Bronze Horseman, a work since recognized as one of the landmarks in the genre. In 1904, he published his "Alphabet in Pictures", at once a children's primer and elaborate art book, copies of which fetch as much as $10,000US at auction.^[5] Illustrations from this volume were featured at a video presentation during the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics in Sochi in 2014.

In 1901, Benois was appointed scenic director of the

During these years, his work with Diaghilev's Ballets Russes was groundbreaking. His sets and costumes for the productions of Les Sylphides (1909), Giselle (1910), and Petrushka (1911), are counted among his greatest triumphs. Although Benois worked primarily with the Ballets Russes, he also collaborated with the Moscow Art Theatre and other notable theatres of Europe.

Surviving the upheaval of the

In 1927 he left Russia and settled in Paris.^[1] He worked primarily as a set designer after settling in France.^[1]

Family

In 1894, Alexandre married

• Alexandre's son, Nicola Alexandrovich Benois (also known as Nikolai Benois), was born in 1901, and went on to become a celebrated opera designer, creating costumes and sets for opera companies all over the world.^[4]
• Alexandre's nephew, Nikolai Albertovich Benois, married the opera singer
  Maria Nikolaevna Kuznetsova.^[1]
• Alexandre was also the uncle of Eugene Lanceray and Zinaida Serebriakova, who became recognized Russian artists, and one of the great-uncles of the British actor Sir Peter Ustinov.
• Alexandre was the cousin of Hans von Bartels, of the Alsace Lorraine Bartels. Benois biography contains an entire chapter dedicated to Hans von Bartels.
• He has a great-great granddaughter living in Moscow, called Maria.

See also

• Benois family

Works

• 
  Set design for Le Pavillon d'Armide, Ballets Russes, 1909
• 
  Promenade of Empress Elizabeth through the Noble Streets of Saint Petersburg, 1903
• 
  Peter the Great Meditating the Idea of Building Saint Petersburg at the Shore of the Baltic Sea
• 
  Military Parade of Emperor

  Mikhaylovsky Castle

  , 1907
• 
  Set for Stravinsky's Petrushka, 1911
• 
  At the German Quarter, 1911

Cultural depictions

• Anna Pavlova, film by Emil Loteanu; portrayed by Anatoli Romashin (1983).

See also

Wikisource has original works by or about:
Alexandre Benois

• List of Russian artists

References

Bibliography

• Katerina Clark, Petersburg: Crucible of the Cultural Revolution (Cambridge, MA, 1995).
• John E. Bowlt, The Silver Age: Russian Art of the Early Twentieth Century and the 'World of Art' Group (Newtonville, MA, 1982).
• Janet Kennedy, The Mir Iskusstva Group and Russian Art, 1898-1912 (New York, 1978).
• Sergei Makovskii, Stranitsy khudozhestvennoi kritiki – Kniga vtoraia: Sovremennye Russkie khudozhniki (Saint Petersburg, 1909).
• Gregory Stroud, Retrospective Revolution: A History of Time and Memory in Urban Russia, 1903-1923 (Urbana-Champaign, Illinois: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2006).

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Alexandre Benois.

• Works by or about Alexandre Benois at Internet Archive
• This Alexandre Nikolayevich Benois collection contains a skechbook with costume and set designs for Giselle by Adolphe Adam (1924) held by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee Theatre Research Institute, The Ohio State University Libraries.
• W.H. Crain Costume and Scene Design Collection at the Harry Ransom Center