Le Train bleu front cloth

Stage designer Prince Alexander Schervashidze painted this front cloth for travelling dance company Ballets Russes in just 24 hours.

Schervashidze enlarged artist Pablo Picasso’s small painting ‘The Two Women Running along the Beach’ (1922) to set the scene for musical comedy ‘Le Train bleu’. Picasso was so impressed with the copy that he signed the work himself.

In 1967, the Friends of the Museum of Performance formed to purchase items belonging to the Ballets Russes, which they donated to the V&A in 1976 in recognition of the company’s influence on British dance.