Keith Vaughan (1912-1977)
"Thamar"
Signed and dedicated "for V.M. Vassar, July 1936", a portfolio of twelve silver gelatin prints from the ballet depicting Lubov Tchernicheva, eleven signed and dated 1936 below, 37.5cm by 31cm

Vaughan’s first visit to the ballet was on Saturday, July 20, 1929; his mother took him to Covent Garden to see the Ballets Russes. He witnessed one of the last performances of Diaghilev’s original company, since the legendary impresario died one month later and the company folded. Having become obsessed with ballet, he attended performances at Covent Garden, Saddlers Wells, The Hippodrome and The Alhambra over the following decade. He wrote in his journal,

Nothing can recreate the staggering wonder of that Saturday afternoon when I first saw Serge Lifar in 1929. And I can share it with no one. Mother, of course, took me, but understood nothing.

The Ballets Russes was revived by Colonel Wassily de Basil and René Blum in 1932, under the name of the Ballets Russes de Monte Carlo. The new company visited Covent Garden from 1933 onwards and were a sensation. For some time, ballet had been at the cutting edge of culture and very much an avant garde art form. The finest, most radical painters, designers, choreographers and composers worked in the world of ballet; anyone seriously concerned with the creative arts was interested in the art form and Vaughan was no exception. He attended and photographed performances night after night, occasionally from his seat or, more often, from a gangway adjacent to the stage using a tripod. His surviving photographs capture scenes from Beau Danube (Strauss), Soleil de Nuit (Rimsky-Korsakov), Les Présages (Tchaikovsky), La Boutique Fantasque (Rossini/Respighi), Beach (Françaix) and Debussy’s L’Après-midi d’un Faune. He even attended the world premiere of Choreartium (Brahms) at the Alhambra in 1933 and his existing photographs are probably a record of that very first performance.

The one act ballet Thamar was premiered at the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris on May 20, 1912, the year Vaughan was born. It was a lavish display of Orientalism with music by Mily Balakirev, designs by Léon Bakst and choreography by Michel Fokine. The role of Thamar was created by Tamara Karsavina. Three weeks later it was performed at the Royal Opera House Covent Garden where it remained in the repertoire in the mid-1930s, when Vaughan attended several performances with Lubov Tchernicheva, who inherited the title role. Like everyone else he was taken by her extraordinary stage presence, which is made abundantly clear in his Thamar album. As the company’s star dancer, she was celebrated for her highly expressive performances, the effect of which was generated not only by her physical movement but her acute sense of theatrical gesture and varied use of facial expression. Vaughan’s album concentrates on these very qualities as Tchenicheva, in the role of the sadistic Queen of Georgia, seduces and murders her unfortunate suitor.

At the time he created the Thamar album, Vaughan was working as a designer and layout man for Lintas Advertising Agency. Several other photographic albums by him exist, most notably Highgate Ponds (1933) and Dick’s Book of Photographs (1940), both in the ‘Keith Vaughan Archive’ in the School of Art Collection at Aberystwyth University. The present work is a rare example of Vaughan’s early photography, an important visual account of a Ballets Russes production (which carried with it the nineteenth century Imperial Russian ballet tradition) and an important record which captures the compelling allure, during a live performance, of one of ballet’s great stars.

We are grateful to Gerard Hastings for this catalogue entry.