Cyril Beaumont

The Three-Cornered Hat Cyril Beaumont

Between 1918 and 1921 the English bookseller, publisher, and dance historian Cyril W. Beaumont published a series of booklets about some of the ballets in Serge Diaghilev's Ballets Russes company's repertoire. Each one was illustrated by some of Beaumont's artist friends, in this case Ethelbert White, with the illustrations being hand-coloured by Beaumont and his wife, giving a charming glimpse of some of the major ballets of the time.

This one, The Three-Cornered Hat, tells the story of the great ballet by Léonide Massine, to music by Manual de Falla and designs by Pablo Picasso: danced by Tamara Karsavina and Massine himself, it was one of Diaghilev's greatest successes.