Léon Bakst

By 1917 Léon Bakst was one of the most talked-about designers in Paris. His costumes and sets for the Ballets Russes had filled the theatres with colour a few years earlier, before the war emptied them. Modigliani, who painted this while living hand to mouth in wartime Montparnasse, gives him none of that spectacle. Bakst sits in a plain jacket against a quiet ground of muted blue and green, his head tipped slightly, the features drawn long in the way Modigliani drew nearly everyone. The two men moved in the same circle of exiles and artists. Bakst's eyes are left as narrow dark almonds, giving almost nothing away.