Alexander Benois
1870-1960
Born into the artistic and intellectual Benois family, prominent members of the 19th and early 20th-century Russian intelligentsia, Benois graduated from the Faculty of Law, St Petersburg Imperial University in 1894. Three years later while in Versailles, he painted a series of watercolours depicting the Last Promenades of Louis XIV. When exhibited by Pavel Tretyakov in 1897, they brought him to the attention of Sergei Diaghilev and the artist Léon Bakst. Together the three men founded the art magazine and movement The World of Art, which promoted the Aesthetic Movementand the Art Nouveau in Russia.
In 1901, Benois was appointed scenic director of the Mariinsky Theatre in Saint Petersburg, the home of the Imperial Russian Ballet, and from 1905 worked regularly with Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes. His sets and costumes for the productions of Les Sylphides (1909), Giselle (1910), and Petrushka (1911), are counted among his greatest triumphs. After 1917, Benois achieved recognition for his scholarship and served as curator of the Old Masters Gallery at the Hermitage Museum from 1918 to 1926. During this time he secured his brother’s Leonardo da Vinci painting of the Madonna for the museum. It became known as the Madonna Benois.
In 1927 he left Russia and settled in Paris where he continued his work as a noted set designer.
