Alexandre Benois

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Alexandre Nikolayevich Benois (Russian: Алекса́ндр Никола́евич Бенуа́) (4 May 1870, St. Petersburg–9 February 1960, Paris), was a prominent member of the St. Petersburg artistic intellectual Benois family, an influential art critic, artist, preservationist, and founding member of Mir iskusstva. His influence on the modern ballet and stage design is considered seminal.

Alexandre's father Nicholas Benois and brother Leon Benois were noted Russian architects. Alexandre didn't plan to devote his life to art and graduated from the Faculty of Law, St. Petersburg University in 1894. Three years later, while in Versailles, he painted a series of watercolors depicting Last Promenades of Louis XIV. When exhibited by Pavel Tretyakov in 1897, they brought him to attention of Sergei Diaghilev and Leon Bakst. Together they founded the art magazine and movement Mir iskusstva which aimed at promoting the Aesthetic Movement and Art Nouveau in Russia.

During the first decade of the new century, Benois continued to edit Mir iskusstva but also pursued his scholarly interests. He prepared and printed several monographs on the 19th-century Russian art and Tsarskoye Selo. From 1918 to 1926, he ran the gallery of Old Masters in the Hermitage Museum, to which he secured his brother's heirloom—Leonardo's Madonna Benois. In 1903, he printed his illustrations to Pushkin's Bronze Horseman which have since been recognized as one of the landmarks in the genre.

In 1901, Benois was appointed scenic director of the Mariinsky Theatre. Since then, he devoted most of his time to stage design and decor. Sets and costumes he designed for Ballets Russes productions of Les Sylphides (1909), Giselle (1910), and Petrushka (1911) are counted among his greatest triumphs. Although he worked primarily with Diaghilev for the Ballets Russes, he simultaneously collaborated with the Moscow Art Theatre and other notable theatres of Europe. His Memoirs were published in two volumes in 1955. The Russian artists Eugene Lanceray and Zinaida Serebriakova were his nephew and niece, and the British actor Sir Peter Ustinov was his grand nephew.

[edit] Works

Promenade of Empress Elizabeth through the Noble Streets of St. Petersburg, 1903	Illustration to Alexander Pushkin's Bronze Horseman, 1904	Soldiers of Catherine II	Peter the Great Meditating the Idea of Building St. Petersburg at the Shore of the Baltic Sea
Military Parade of Emperor Paul in front of Mikhaylovsky Castle, 1907	Set for Stravinsky's Petrushka, 1911	At the German Quarter, 1911

[edit] 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 (Petersburg, 1909).
• Gregory Stroud, Retrospective Revolution: A History of Time and Memory in Urban Russia, 1903-1923 (Urbana-Champaign, 2006).