Alexandre Nikolayevich Benois () (
May 4, 1870, St. Petersburg–February 9, 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.
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