Regarded as one of the most influential ballet companies of the 20th century, the Ballets Russes was founded in Paris by Sergei Pavlovich Diaghilev (1872-1929) in 1909. Born in Russia, Diaghilev became immersed in the cultural and artistic scenes of St. Petersburg where he helped to curate exhibitions of contemporary art, worked for the Imperial theaters, and organized a European tour of Russian music to Paris. It was the success of this tour which helped lead to the premier performance of what was then called Saison Russe, devoted entirely to Russian ballet, including the ‘Polovtsian Dances’ from Prince Igor and Le Festin with work by several choreographers set to music by Russian composers. The dancers were composed largely of performers from the Imperial Ballet of St. Petersburg hired by Diaghilev during their summer holidays. Following the resounding success of this first performance, Diaghilev turned the troupe into a more permanent company in Paris, now called the Ballets Russes, which continued to mount productions until Diaghilev’s death in 1929.

The performances of the Ballets Russes, similar to Diaghilev’s earlier exhibitions of Russian art in Europe, made a conscious effort to combine both traditional Western ballet and Russian design, music, and culture. This included commissioning Russian artists, such as Leon Bakst and Alexandre Benois, to design sets and costumes, and Russian composers, such as Prokofiev, Tchaikovsky, and Stravinsky, to compose the music, in partnership with the chief choreographer Michel Fokine. As the popularity of the Ballets Russes grew, so too did the popularity of the principal dancers, including Tamara Karsavina, Lydia Lopokova, Leonide Massine, and Vaslav Nijinsky, widely considered the greatest male dancer of the 20th century.

Cyril W. Beaumont (1891-1976) began his career as a seller of rare books in 1910 in a shop purchased for him by his father at 75 Charing Cross Road in London. There his shop assistant Alice Mari Beha encouraged him to begin attending the ballet, including a production by the Ballets Russes in 1912, beginning his long love with the art form. Beaumont began expanding his store to include publishing, and shifting the focus from literature to dance, turning it into an internationally known center for those interested in ballet and dance by 1920. It was at this time that Beaumont was inspired to publish a group of prints and related figurines of dancers from the Ballets Russes in costume, writing in his memoir: “I thought it would be interesting to try and make two-dimensional figures of some principal dancers of the Diaghilev company… I decided to invite the cooperation of Adrian Allinson… [He] accepted the commission and designed 19 figures in all, including Pavlova, Karsavina, Nijinsky, and Bolm…” (C.W. Beaumont, Bookseller at the Ballet, Memoirs 1891-1929, London, 1975, p. 168). Though he had planned to make 50 figures in total, it is uncertain how many were actually produced, and very few survive today.

The present group of figures comes from the collection of American ballerina Ruth Page (1899-1991). Born in Indianapolis, Indiana, Page made her debut on Broadway in 1917 before dancing with Anna Pavlova’s company during a South American tour in 1918, followed by performing in Chicago in 1919 in John Alden Carpenter’s Birthday of the Infanta choreographed by Adolph Bolm. Page first met Beaumont in 1920 while she was living in London performing Birthday of the Infanta at the Coliseum Theater with Bolm’s Ballet Intime company. Page would later write in a 1937 article for the New York Times: “One cannot leave London without saying a few words about the extra-ordinary Cyril Beaumont. Every dancer should visit his charmingly messy and marvelous little shop in Charing Cross Road… Mr. Beaumont not only translates and publishes old books and documents concerning the dance, but writes and publishes books about all the present day dancers who perform in London” (reprinted in R. Page, Page by Page, 1978, p. 33). Beaumont was clearly impressed by the young dancer, and commissioned the figurine of Page from Randolph Schwabe included in the present lot. Schwabe’s original drawing for the figurine is now in the Dance Collection of the New York Public Library.

A number of these figurines retailed by Beaumont can be found in the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, as part of the Cyril W. Beaumont Bequest. These include Lubov Tchernicheva as Constanza in Les Femmes de Bonne Humeur and as Zobeide in Scheharazade, Leonide Messine as the Miller in Le Tricorne, Lydia Lopokova as the Can-Can Dancer in La Boutique Fantasque, and Tamara Karsavina in the title role of Thamar and as The Young Girl in Le Spectre de la Rose, such as found in the present lot.