In September 1918, after a four-year absence from England, the Russian Ballet returned to London, delighting its pre-War devotees.6 So began the longest period of time in which the Ballet played in any single city: over the course of the next six­ teen months Diaghilev was to mount three successive seasons at three different London theatres. Diaghilev took advantage of this extended residence not only to restore the company's always precarious finances and to reverse its peripatetic wartime existence, but also to reinforce the alignment between the Ballet and the avant-garde that had begun with Picasso's earlier ballet, Parade. In part compensation for the absence from the company of Vaslav Nijinsky and Tamara Karsavina, the two great stars of the pre-War seasons, he was able to introduce to London a pair of hitherto relatively unknown but outstanding dancers in Massine and Lopokova; he also brought to England three of the leading artists of the modem movement - Derain, Picasso and Matisse.

The Ballet's sudden reappearance in the capital, two months before the Annistice, was viewed as a harbinger of peace and a promise of a return to cosmopolitan, pre-War gaiety. Within a few weeks of its arrival, its leading members were being feted by their friends and admirers. Roger Fry hosted a lunch party for Diaghilev and Massine at the beginning of October, at which Clive Bell was also present, and at which was discussed the possibility of exhibiting Massine's pri­ vate collection of works by Picasso, Leger, Gris, De Chirico and others at the Omega Workshops.7 On 3rd October a party for 'the Russian dancers and some thirty amateurs' was given at 46 Gordon Square, a house shared by Clive and Vanessa Bell with Maynard Keynes and H.TJ. Norton.8 Among the guests were Lopokova and her husband,  Randolfo Barocchi, the Ballet's business manager; the French artist Simon Bussy and his wife Dorothy; Roger Fry; the painter Nina Hamnett, who brought with her 'several friends of unexpected nationality' ; Mark Gertler; and Osbert, Sacheverell and Edith Sitwell.9 A week later the Sitwells organised an evening gathering at their house in Carlyle Square, Chelsea, for some of the dancers and a cross-section of London's painters and writers; and on Annistice Day itself, Diaghilev and Massine joined a party given by the barrister and collector Montague Shearman at his rooms in the Adelphi.10 During these months the Ballet was performing within a variety bill, at the Coliseum, St Martin's Lane, each night giving one ballet from its familiar repertory. According to Clive Bell, writing in the New Republic in July 1919, this programme was greeted 'with joy but without wild excitement'.' 1 What did excite Bell, and others in his circle, were the rumours that Picasso was imminently to join the Ballet in London and the news that Derain had been engaged for the following year to design a new ballet for Diaghilev.

Bloomsbury's artists and critics were well placed to welcome Picasso to London. Fry had been the first to exhib­ it his work in England, at his two Post-Impressionist exhibi­ tions in 1910 and 1912, and was among the first English writers to comment with any authority on his art. At the out­ break of war in 1914, all the known Picassos in England -with the exception of those hanging on the walls of the German Embassy as part of the collection of the ambassador's wife, Princess Lichnowsky -had been acquired by figures associated with Bloomsbury : Clive Bell bought a proto-Cubist still life, Pots et dtron (1907; private collection, Germany; Z.11*, 241) from the Second Post-Impressionist Exhibition in 1912; and the following year Fry acquired the barely figurative T2te d'homme (1913; private collection, New York; Z.11**, 431) from the artist's dealer Daniel Kahnweil­ er.12 In Paris in early 1914, the Blls, Fry and Duncan Grant had all visited the artist in his studio in rue Schoelcher. How­ ever, the Picasso with whom they were to renew their acquaintance in 1919 was, superficially at least, a somewhat different character from the one they had last seen in Mont­ parnasse five years earlier. When his friends such as Braque and Derain were at the Front, Picasso had remained in Paris, where Jean Cocteau and Diaghilev took him up and persuaded him to collaborate with them and Erik Satie on a 'Cubist' ballet. In early 1917 he travelled to Rome to join Diaghilev and complete his designs for Parade, which received its premiere in May that year at the Theatre du Chatelet in Paris. That summer he was again with the Ballet in Spain, where he became engaged to Olga Khokhlova, a member of Diaghilev's company since 1911 (she appeared in London during his first English season), who had danced subsidiary roles in several ballets, including Le Sacre du Printemps, Les Sylphides and Parade, as well as taking a leading part in Les Femmes de Bonne Humeur. '3 Although by all accounts a proficient performer, it is unlikely she would have risen further in the Ballet's ranks. On her marriage  in July 1918 she retired from dancing and settled in Paris with Picasso in their new, chic apartment in rue de la Boetie on the Right Bank, in the immaculate sur­ roundings of which she hoped to transform her husband from an incorrigible Bohemian into a dapper gentleman.

A month into his autumn  season, Diaghilev  wrote  to Picasso with news of the Ballet's reception and activities in London: 'LA vie ici est tres animee - on ne manque de rien, on est bien chauffe et nouri - Londres est plein de monde. Les theatres marchent mieux quejamais et nous travaillons comme des negres'.'4 Although Diaghilev's letter referred to a proposed English premiere of Parade, its main substance concerned his inten­ tion of giving Pulcinella, a ballet already planned with Picas­ so, in London the following spring. Additionally, he hoped that Picasso would make 'un grand portrait de Massine en Pulcinella, une peinture en pied', for which he told him he had already set aside ten thousand francs. Above all, he was keen for the artist to rejoin the company - although disappointed to hear from their mutual friend Lalla Vandervelde (the wife of the Belgian politician Emile Vandervelde) that 'tu n'avais pas grande envie de venir a Londres'. A second letter ten days later eventually elicited a postcard in reply; but, with charac­ teristic evasion, Picasso promised only that 'je vais t'ecrire un des ces jours ', protesting that he was completely preoccupied in moving into his new apartment.15

Like Pulcinella, which was eventually mounted in Paris in 1920, The Three-Cornered Hat had its genesis in the War years. 16 A Spanish ballet had first been mooted in 1916. By the following year Gregorio Martinez Sierra had provided a libretto based on Pedro Antonio de Alarc6n's classic 1874 novella, El sombrero de tres picos, and Manuel de Falla had completed his first draft of the score. Later that year, a pan­ tomime version of the piece, under the title El Co"oegidor y la Molinera, was performed in Madrid. Picasso might have seemed an immediately obvious choice to design a ballet set in his native Andalusia, but the suggestion that he do so first occurs in Diaghilev's correspondence only in spring 1919.17

The incentive for Diaghilev to stage The Three-Cornered Hat in London was the stipulation made by the theatre manager Oswald Stoll that he include four new works in his summer season at the Alhambra Theatre, Leicester Square, where three ballets were to be performed each night. He had to act quickly. During a short visit to Paris in mid-April 1919, he commissioned Picasso to design the ballet and, from the Hotel Westminster, Paris,  he wrote  to him setting out his terms: ' Vous Jerez les esquisses du rideau, du decor et des costumes et accessoires necessaries pour le dit ballet, et vous allez diriger Les travaux d'execution des decors et costumes a Londres en brossant vous-meme certaines parties des toiles que vousjugerez utiles'.18 The fee offered was ten thousand francs (the same sum promised for the portrait of Massine); Picasso would be allowed to keep all sketches and studies, while the curtain, scenery and cos­ tumes would remain Diaghilev's property. 19 At the same time, the impresario intended to give the first London performance of Parade as part of his summer season: he wrote to Picasso that he expected the premiere to take place in early June, after Satie had written some additional music for his score.20 When the programme for the Alhambra season, scheduled to run from 30th April to 22nd July, was published at the  end of April, The Three-Cornered Hat and Parade were listed as two of a quartet of new productions to be presented,  along with La Boutique Fantasque and The Gardens of Aranjuez. It is striking how moveable a feast was the Ballet's programme and what a close-run thing was the production of The Three-Cornered Hat. For instance, the May issue of Dancing Times announced Leon Bakst as the designer for La Boutique Fantasque (his designs had, in fact, been rejected by Diaghilev) and, even more sur­ prisingly, Natalia Gontcharova as the designer for The Three­ Cornered Hat; of the other two advertised new ballets, Parade was not seen in London for a further six months and The Gar dens of Aranjuez was never performed. Nonetheless, once he had accepted the commission for The Three-Cornered Hat, Picasso set to work immediately. In early May, a fortnight before the artist left Paris, Diaghilev informed de Falla in Madrid that 'Massine est en train de monter le ballet et Picasso Jait une men1eille de mise en scene'.21 On 16th May Diaghilev telegraphed Picasso that authorisation for his passage was in place and Picasso and his wife duly crossed the Channel on 25th May, arriving in London that day.22 Three weeks later, on 16thJune, they presented themselves at Bow Street police station to have their identity books checked and stamped (Fig.7).

Writing to Picasso in mid-May, Diaghilev had undertaken to find him rooms or a small apartment in London. In the event, Picasso joined Diaghilev at the Savoy Hotel, the Ballet's headquarters since its arrival in England the previous autumn. Diaghilev had reserved seven rooms at the Savoy, for himself, Massine, Sergei Grigoriev (the company's regisseur and husband of one of its leading dancers, Lubov Tchernicheva), Lopokova and her husband, and other immediate members of his circle. The Picassos stayed - presumably at Diaghilev's expense - in room 574, overlooking the hotel's courtyard. 2 3 When the prima ballerina Tamara Karsavina, absent from the company since 1914, rejoined the Ballet in June, she too took up residence at the hotel. The remaining dancers were billeted in various more modest lodgings in the Covent Garden area. Picasso, when a bachelor, had travelled with Diaghilev before, but nothing would have quite prepared him for the luxuries of the Savoy and the variety of well-upholstered social events that life with the Ballet in London was to offer. It was by no means his natural way of living but, for the present, he became a willing participant, if only to please Olga. They were included in receptions and dinners at the hotel attended by several of Diaghilev's faithful titled ladies who supported the Russian Ballet in London .24 Whether or not they were present at the Gala Dinner held in the Savoy Cafe on 19th July (the date designated by the British government as a national day of Peace celebration) orjoined in the dancing afterwards in the hotel's two ballrooms to jazz, Hawaiian music, the pipers of the Scots Guards and the Savoy Full Band, is unrecorded, although an invitation to the entertainment is still among Picasso's papers. They certainly cut a distinctive couple in the hotel: it was while dining in the Grill Room with Clive Bell on 9th July that Virginia Woolf caught a glimpse of the artist 'making off for the ballet' with his wife.25

On 1st June a Sunday newspaper, the Weekly Dispatch, carried what is surely the first interview with Picasso in England.26 The paper's correspondent, 'Dry Point', had man­ aged to snatch a brief conversation with the artist outside the Alhambra. Prominently displayed on the theatre's exterior was the poster for the Ballet's summer season, which reproduced in colour Picasso's striking costume design for the Chinese Conjuror in Parade (Fig.9). This poster, widely on view in the West End and on the Underground, had aroused much public and press comment in the weeks since its unveil­ ing.21 But, to the embarrassment of 'Dry Point', the example to hand had been 'defiled by the wretched scribbles of street urchins, who had added a beard and moustache to the visage of the drawing'. The artist himself was unperturbed: '"Wherever I go," he said, "I see that people have instinctively improved my picture. No sooner is it posted up than some­ one comes along and pencils a curly moustache on the face, or draws an umbrella in the uplifted hand. I find myself charmed by the naivete of these efforts. Offend me? Not at all! I like them. They are most instructive"'. The defacement of his costume design on the poster was just one of several examples Picasso gave of the 'instinctive art' he had discovered in the London streets: he 'waxed excited over our colourful omnibuses', described his 'thrill' at seeing a pavement artist and expressed his admiration for the uniform of the British soldier.

This interview is an indication of the celebrity Picasso had already achieved in London, despite the almost general resist­ ance to his art. Even before he reached England, admirers had been preparing entertainments for him. Several times Clive Bell had to postpone a planned party at 46 Gordon Square in honour of the artist when the date of his arrival changed. In a letter to his wife he wrote: 'I count absolutely on you, Roger [Fry], Duncan [Grant], and [Edward] Wolfe as a sort of committee -to organize and decorate. Will Roger dig out some of his grand friends? Itmust be a great success in the half bohemian, half mondain  style'.28  While the party remained on hold, the artist was Bell's guest for lunch at Gordon Square on at least three occasions: once early in June when Lytton Strachey was also present - 'not so exciting' was the writer's terse comment; a fortnight later, together with Derain, when Picasso introduced his host to "'mafemme legitime"'; and again on 25th June.29 He also attended an evening party in Kensington given by the harpsichordist Violet Gordon Woodhouse, a friend and musical adviser to Diaghilev, where he mischievously offered to buy his hostess's collection of faux medieval German paintings.3° Lady Ottoline Morrell, one of Diaghilev's most devoted supporters and confidantes, was likewise determined to net Picasso and conducted a two­ month campaign to inveigle him to visit her in the country at Garsington Manor, near Oxford.3' After several thwarted attempts, she finally achieved her aim at the very end of Picasso's stay, when on 28th July  he, Olga, Diaghilev and Massine spent the day at Garsington. An indefatigable diarist and photographer, Lady Ottoline most unusually made neither a written nor photographic record of the visit. The only testimony is her visitors' book, which contains the sig­ natures of Diaghilev and the others alongside those of Aldous and Maria Huxley and the socialist writer Molly Hamilton, who were staying at the house.32

By the beginning ofJune, Diaghilev had finally put aside his plans to give Parade as part of his summer season. The focus of his attention was the imminent premiere of LA Boutique Fantasque. Derain, who was familiar with London from his visits to paint the city in 1906-o7, had preceded Picasso to the capital, arriving in mid-May; on 18th May Clive Bell met him for the first time at Roger Fry's house in Dalmeny Avenue, Camden Town.B During his first few days he stayed in a hotel before renting a flat (at two guineas a week) from Vanessa Bell at 36 Regent Square in a shabby district on the northern fringe of Bloomsbury.34 Unlike the Picassos, he was not drawn to the smart whirl that enveloped Diaghilev at the Savoy, much preferring lunch in a chop-house or a pub and happy to be guided socially by Fry and Bell. Before leaving Paris he had already prepared his designs for LA Boutique and during the following three weeks oversaw the painting of the sets and front curtain, on which, as a sly allusion to Picasso's forth­ coming ballet, he included a three-cornered hat.

The first night of LA Boutique Fantasque has been raptur­ ously described in several memoirs of the period and the bal­ let is still regarded as one of the most perfect in the repertory. The Alhambra was completely full, from stalls to gallery; and from the moment Derain's drop-curtain was raised and Rossini's music began 'the ballet was danced to continual applause, sometimes crackling like rifle fire, sometimes exploding into a roar. When the Can-Can Dancers appeared there were terrific shouts of Lopokova! Massine!'Js 'Never before or since have I beheld such a scene of white-tied, tail­ coated enthusiasm', recalled Clive Bell over thirty-five years later.36 Both Derain and Picasso were in the audience and, at the curtain call, the former was persuaded by Diaghilev and Massine to take a bow - wearing the same blue serge suit which, according to Bell, he wore throughout his visit to London.37 Towards the end of June Derain returned briefly to Paris -forcing a further postponement of Bell's party -but promised to come back, with his mistress (and future wife) Alice Gery, in time for the opening of Picasso's ballet.38

Picasso was then in the thick of preparations for The Three­ Cornered Hat, working at 48 Floral Street, in a large top-floor room reached only by a narrow ladder, which was both the repository for the Ballet's sets and scenery and the studio of Vladimir Polunin, the scene painter. Polunin (1880-1957) was a Russian emigre who had worked for Thomas Beecham before the War, and who, in partnership with his English wife Elizabeth (also known as Violet), was to become Diaghilev's principal scene painter in the 1920s, travelling with the Ballet between London and Paris. In 1927 he published a manual on the 'continental' method of stage-painting, of which he was the foremost exponent in England, and two years later he established the theatre design course at the Slade School of Fine Art, the first of its kind in an English art school. It is largely owing to Polunin that Picasso's progress on the ballet is so well recorded, both from his written account and in a series of photographs, probably taken by one of his assistants. Some of these  show the Polunins and another assistant, Alexander  Bray, mixing colours and, in the 'continental' method, using long-handled brushes to paint the curtain, which was laid flat on the floor rather than, as was usual, hung vertically (Fig. 11). Others record visits made to the studio by Diaghilev (Fig.8) and Massine (Fig.10) and a small party held to celebrate  the  completion  of  the  decor  and  curtain (Fig.13).J9 Although Picasso was already becoming the most photographed artist of all time, he had never before been captured actually at work (Fig.12) -and would not be again until 1936, when Dora Maar took several snapshots of him painting another curtain, for Romain Rolland's play, Le 14 Juillet. 40

In his book, Polunin contrasted Derain's and Picasso's approaches to their commissions from Diaghilev. Derain, who had never before designed for the theatre, provided only an oil-sketch of his proposed set, which 'seemed to me so untheatrical that I could hardly conceive how it could be used for the stage'.41 Picasso, on the other hand, was completely professional. In Paris he had experimented with some twenty variations of setting the stage, producing a huge number of studies in the process, including numerous watercolours (in different combinations of colour), at least one oil painting, several precise pencil drawings and three separate maquettes.42 In London he further simplified and softened his design, making more dominant the huge bridge that links the buildings on either side of the set (Fig. 14). By the time of his first visit to Floral Street, he had prepared a 'booklet-maquette' of his scene, from which Polunin was able to construct a model of the set. Polunin enthused that, even without colour, 'the nobility of the tones, the harmony of the composition, the voluntary divergence from the laws of perspective produced an artistic whole'.43 He continued: 'Having dealt so long with Bakst's complicated and ostentatious scenery, the austere simplicity of Picasso's drawing, with its total absence of unnecessary detail, the composition and unity of the colouring - in short, the synthetical character of the whole was outstanding. It was just as if one had spent a long time in a hot room and then passed into the fresh air.'44

Polunin records that Picasso came daily to the studio, show ing a keen interest in the scene-painters' methods and asking them to retain the individuality of his drawing and to pay par ticular attention to its colouring. The canvases were very thin ly primed to preserve the silky texture of his sketch; and, to maintain the general unity of tone and uniform opacity that Picasso desired, Polunin used large quantities of zinc white - a pigment abhorred by the Ballet's earlier designers, since it destroyed the brilliance of their colours. Along with a small amount of ivory black, it was used to dull the ultramarine sky; the blacks of the doors ands windows were neutralised by an admixture of zinc white and burnt sienna; and, after many trials, the ivory tone of the walls was achieved by mixing zinc white with a light chrome yellow. This muted colouring was consistent with Picasso's neo-classical palette, developed following his 1917 visit to Italy; but, as Marilyn McCully has noted, other elements of his design are reminiscent of the Cubist period.45 His imaginary village recalls the Catalan hill town of Horta de Sant Joan where the artist worked during the summer of 1909, while his great arched bridge evokes the medieval Pont du Diable at Ceret in French Catalonia, where he spent several months each year between 1911 and 1913. Although Picasso's design for the set was essentially naturalistic, its planar structure enabled him to employ certain simple Cubist devices: perspective is distorted, buildings are twisted 'to reveal more than the eye perceives' and space is created through a sub de interplay of angles.46 Picasso involved himself in every aspect of the decor - he designed the sedan-chair, the well-head, the birdcage and the striped awning over the porch of the Miller's house - and he himself painted the silhouette of the distant vil lage as well as the stars falling out of the Andalusian sky. At the dress-rehearsal, Diaghilev observed that the Miller's house seemed 'a trifle dull' and suggested that Picasso enliven it by adding a vine growing against its wall: this, too, he painted on by hand.47

In the 1960s, Picasso told Douglas Cooper that he was not 'deeply interested in nor inspired by the underlying story of the ballet, which unlike Parade did not impinge on his exist ing range of themes or artistic pre-occupations'.48 Even so, the many extant costume designs (the cast for the ballet was rela tively large) and the few photographs recording its original appearance (Fig.21), reflect aspects of Picasso's shifting styles from immediately before and after his work on the ballet. The sharply defined areas of unmodulated colour in the dresses echo, for example, the collage-like planes of the Italian woman (1917; Buhrle Foundation, Zurich; Z.III, 18), and the emphatic bars and stripes in the skirts anticipate some of the complex patterning of still fifes from the early 1920s. Seen together in movement on stage especially in the stamping crescendi of de Falla's score - the costumes provided a sensational kaleidoscope of bristling colour against the paler set.49 To help him determine the cut of his costumes Picasso watched the dancers in rehearsal: one drawing (Fig. 15) shows Felix Fernandez, a brilliant but ill-fated young flamenco dancer whom Diaghilev brought to London to teach the company traditional Spanish dances. Picasso 'usually sat in the corner during the rehearsals of The Three-Cornered Hat and made drawings', recalled Tamara Karsavina - who danced the role of the Miller's Wife - in an interview in the 1960s:

He was very silent, very reserved, I would say. Always scribbling something. But there was that kind of smile on his face as if he sized everybody up, and I think mentally he liked to pull everybody's leg. During the rehearsals of Le Tricorne he used to sketch my costume, and I looked over his shoulder and said, 'How are you going to make the costume for me?' I expected something magnificent with spangles. 'Oh', he said, 'very, very simple'. And he said, 'I am going to make it round you'. And that's why he did it at the rehearsal, because he wanted to watch the dance, and know how the costume would move with the dance. You know that won derful compelling fine of his; he really knew movement.50

The costumes he created for the principal dancers were in a lower key than those for the corps de ballet. In his novella, Alarcen had described the Miller's Wife as more elegandy dressed than her Andalusian neighbours, in the style of Goya's women; and Picasso duly gave her a typically Goya-esque dress, with flounced skirts and a low neckline. 'The costume he finally evolved', Karsarina wrote in her memoirs, 'was a supreme masterpiece of pink silk and black lace of the simplest shape; a symbol more than an ethnographic reproduction of a national costume' (Fig.16).51 With his costume for Massine as the Miller (Fig. 17), Picasso ran into difficulties with Diaghilev. In keeping with the eighteenth-century setting of the ballet, the artist wanted the Miller to wear knee-breeches, while Diaghilev insisted that the nature of Massine's most important dance, the farruca, required very tight, long trousers. Picasso reluctantly compromised: the Miller wore breeches during the first half of the action, and trousers for the finale.52 Massine himself wrote that when he came to arrange the choreography for the individual dancers, T found that his colourful and authentically eighteenth-century costumes were a great help'.53

From Parade onwards, Picasso and Massine established a creative rapport that also fired their partnership on The Three Cornered Hat and, later, on Pulcinella. Picasso's choice of a bull fight as the subject of the ballet's drop-curtain (Fig.18) was both a homage to Goya's tapestries and a tribute to Massine, a fellow aficionado of the corrida who likened his own dancing of the farucca to 'an enraged bull going into the attack'.54 Picas so even advised on some of the musical aspects of the ballet: it was his suggestion that de Falla compose a fanfare to be played before the drop-curtain was raised, as well as adding some authentically Spanish touches to the score. 'Picasso croit aussi qu'il serait tres typique d'ajouter aux certains numeros du ballet, tells que le jota, la farruca, etc. -la voix humaine, il pense que c'est tres espagnol’, Diaghilev told the composer.55 As he had with the set, Picasso made various studies, in pencil and in oil, for his curtain design, particularly of the action in the bullring.56 One shows a toreador tossed up towards the crowd; another, a fallen picador astride his wounded horse, its neck thrust upwards in agony in a gesture that, nearly twenty years later, reappeared in Guernica. The scene he eventually chose to depict was less spectacular: the arrastre, the moment at which horses drag the dead bull from the ring. In their palco above the arena, five spectators tum their backs on the drama to face the audience or each other. On the left, a man in a red cloak (whom Sacheverell Sitwell identified, unconvincingly, as Picasso's self-portrait)57 leans against a column behind a seated woman wearing Andalusian dress; on the right, three majas, in shawls and mantillas, gossip among themselves; and between the two groups passes a boy selling pomegranates from a basket - one of the fruit baskets, perhaps, stored on the ground floor of 48 Floral Street. The Polunins helped Picasso draw the outline of his design, retaining the heavy contours of the final pencil study in order that the image, which occupied a comparatively small central section of the huge grey canvas, would be readable from the back of the theatre. After the general tones had been roughed in, the artist himself started to paint. Sacheverell Sitwell witnessed his progress: 'Diaghilev and Massine were there, and Picasso, in carpet slippers and with a bottle of wine standing near him, was at work. The canvas lay stretched upon the floor, and Picasso was moving about at a great speed over its surface, walking with something of a skating motion. [...] I recall, at the time, thinking that this was the nearest that modem eyes would ever get to the spectacle of Tiepolo, or another of the great Venetian fresco painters, at work'.58 Clive Bell, too, visited the studio and watched Picas­ so put the finishing touches to the curtain.59 These included painting the eyelashes of the female spectators, which he insisted on doing himse1£ Massine recounted that 'there was much amusement when [he] was seen in the street, approach­ ing the studio which was accustomed to the sight of brooms in use - carrying two tooth-brushes!'6o Picasso worked for over a fortnight on the curtain, asking Polunin 'to stop him when, according to the demands of the stage (which he said I knew better than he did), he had achieved the most suitable result'.61 His final flourish was to add his signature at the bot­ tom right-hand corner of the curtain: PICASSO PINXIT   1919.

Such intense activity allowed Picasso little opportunity to explore London, a city about which he had been curious, he later told Roland Penrose, since his student days in Barcelona as part of the anglophile circle of Els Quatre Gats.62 He did ask Clive Bell to accompany him on a visit to the East End, but seems otherwise to have confined himself largely to the Savoy and the vicinity of Covent Garden: he told Bell that he lunched every day at Gennaro's, an  Italian restaurant  at 36 New Compton Street, a short stroll from Floral Street.63 He appears to have visited the British Museum and may have made drawings in front of the Elgin Marbles.64 Whether he went to the National Gallery is unrecorded; staying so near to Trafalgar Square, it would be surprising if he did not once poke his nose into its galleries.65 Fry took him to the Omega Workshops, soon to close down, and he was intrigued by the methods used there for painting furniture and pottery. And Paul Rosenberg, his dealer and new neighbour in Paris, asked him to view a collection offered for sale at Christie's of pictures from the estate of the Canadian businessman and politician Sir George Drummond, 'ou il se trouve: deux Dau mier, un Degas & un Cl. Monet etc ..., [. . .] Pouriez vous me rendre le service, d'aller les voir, & me dire s'ils valent la peine que je franchise les mers pour y assister. Si vous me le conseillez, viendrais & me rejouirais si je pouvais passer une soiree avec vous, ce qui ne nous est pas arrive depuis longtemps’.66

During the course of his stay Picasso made six formally posed portraits in pencil or pen-and-ink, as well as a hasty caricature of the rotund, bearded figure of the music critic Edwin Evans (private collection; Z.XXIX, 412), one of Diaghilev's chief propagandists in England.67 Almost certainly the first portrait he drew, during his first few days in London, was of Derain (Fig. 5), for it was reproduced in the illustrated souvenir programme for La Boutique Fantasque. Although the 'grand portrait’ of Massine never materialised, Picasso did make an elaborate, brooding pencil drawing of his friend, emphasising his chiselled features and dark, Byzantine eyes (Fig. 19). Three portraits of Lydia Lopokova, made on the same day in her room at the Savoy, must have been drawn before 9th July when the dancer sensationally 'fled' from the Ballet -ostensibly on the grounds of physical exhaustion, but in fact to escape from her deteriorating marriage to Barocchi. All three drawings show her seated in an armchair:  one in profile (the artist's heirs; Z.III, 289); another enface, with her arms crossed in front of her chest (Pierpont Morgan Library, New York; Z.III, 299); and the third, the most finished (Fig.20) - it is the only one in which the chevron pattern on her dress is indicated -in three-quarter profile, her hands rest­ ing in her lap. Lopokova greatly admired Picasso, though she did not entirely trust him, finding his attentions towards sev­ eral members of the corps de ballet 'semi-scandalous'; but 'luckily Olga was present' at the sitting.68 A head-and-shoul­ ders portrait of Vladimir Polunin (private collection; unrecorded in the literature) was given to the sitter by Picas­ so and is a testament to the respect that evolved between the artist and the man charged with realising his designs.

 By the end of June, Diaghilev had arranged an eight-day extension to his season. Originally announced for 18th July, the premiere of The Three-Cornered Hat at last took place on 22nd July, the second ballet in a bill that also included Papil­ lons and Children's Tales, with Russian music in the intervals. De Falla, who had been in London since June, in readiness to conduct the first performance, had to return to Spain hours before the curtain rose, having heard that his mother was crit­ ically ill.69 Among the audience were Margot Asquith, wife of the former prime minister (who, the following morning, sent Diaghilev an unsolicited and characteristically pungent review of the performance),Jose-Maria Sert and his future wife Misia Edwards, Clive Bell and his mistress Mary Hutchinson, Duff and Lady Diana Cooper and T.S. Eliot and his first wife, Vivien, the latter as guests of the Sitwells.7° From the wings, the ballet critic Cyril Beaumont watched while, as the stage was set, Picasso

strolled into view, accompanied by a stage-hand carrying a tray of grease paints. [. . .] One of the dancers, dressed as an Alguacil [constable], came on the stage, walked towards Picasso, bowed, and waited. Picasso made a selection of grease-paints and decorated the dancer's chin with a mass of blue, green, and yellow dots, which certainly gave him an appropriately sinister appearance. As he went off, another Alguacil appeared and I well remember his startled look on seeing his fellow-artiste.71

Although Picasso made individual sketches of the  dancers' make-up, to be placed in their dressing-rooms -three, at least, of which survive (private collection; Z.:XXIX, 396, 397 and 399) - he liked, if possible, to apply the maquillage himself according to Lydia Sokolova he gave Massine 'a fantastic make-up, with dabs of the same blue which was used in the costumes of his bodyguard of policemen' .72 It was also his habit to make last-minute alterations in paint to the costumes. In 1960 Clive Bell reminded Picasso how they had once dis­ cussed the problems of designing for the ballet and quoted back to the artist his comment: 'j'etais oblige de peindre les robes sur les corps meme desfigurantes. La petite Lydia [ . . .] etait abom­ inable, elle ne pouvait se tenir tranquille.' Lopokova had con­ firmed this in conversation: "'D'accord," disait-elle, "oui,je crois bien, comment voulez-vous queje me tinsse tranquille quand ii cha­ touillait mes nichons."' ('When he tickled my nipples') .73

The Three-Cornered Hat was performed six times during the last week of the Alhambra season and was greeted with scarce­ ly less enthusiasm than La Boutique Fantasque. The Times reported that the first night received a tremendous ovation from a full house, the audience showering Massine with flowers, wreaths and even a large cake.74 Picasso's drop­ curtain drew almost universal praise -a lone dissentient voice was Ernest Newman in the Obsewer, who complained about 'the gentleman with the bad squint in his calves' - and his 'convention-defying' decor was even more warmly applaud­ ed.7s According to Polunin, the red tints in the stage lighting lent the set something of the quality of a Japanese print.76

W.A. Propert, the Diaghilev Ballet's first historian, wrote of

the delicate flickering beauty of the scene, the suggestion by a single masterly line here and there of hillor bridge, the faint stars silver in a silver-blue sky and the sun-bleached rose of the wall that told you all the heat of that Southern village. Here indeed was the master of the fine drawings and the very sensitive etched plates that one had known for ten years or more. There had been nothing in all the long series [of Diaghilev ballets] to compare with the ethereal beauty of this.77

Along with others, however, Propert had strong reservations about the costumes, particularly those for the corps de ballet:

The beauty began to fade with the insistence of those noisy dresses, dresses that never seem to move with the wearers or answer the changing curves of their bodies, that looked as though they were cut in cardboard, harshly barred and rayed, with all their contours heavily outlined  in black. One or two of such queer garments might have been forgiven, but multiplied to ten or twenty, they became merely ugly.78

Even an enthusiast such as Cyril Beaumont  found that 'the too-frequent introduction of the stripe as a decorative pattern tend[ed) to monotony and cause[d) certain of the dancers to acquire in the choreographic arrangement an importance beyond their allotted role'.79

During its short run, The Three-Cornered Hat was the toast of London, as Diaghilev informed Alfonso XIII of Spain, drawing the king's attention to the part played in the ballet's success by two great Andalusian artists, de Falla and Picasso.80 The long-planned party at Gordon Square was eventually fixed for rnpm on Tuesday 29th July, the penultimate night of the Ballet's season. The invitation announced Maynard Keynes and Clive Bell as joint hosts.81 Of the forty or so 'young or youngish painters, writers and students' whom Bell recalled as being present, twenty-three -according to Keynes, writing to his mother the following week -sat down to sup­ perjust before midnight. 82 Picasso and Derain were the guests of  honour, accompanied by Olga Picasso and Alice Gery. The other guests included Duncan Grant, H.T.J. Norton, Lytton Strachey, Mary  Hutchinson, Edward Wolfe, Aldous  and Maria Huxley, the French writer Pierre Drieu La Rochelle, Ernest Ansermet (who conducted The Three-Cornered Hat in London) and, of course, Massine, together with a contingent from the Ballet -though not Diaghilev. Strachey and Anser­ met were seated at either end of a pair of trestle tables, 'so that their beards might wag in unison'.83 The evening, with its mix of nationalities, its guests ranging from Cambridge intelligentsia to the beau monde and the more louche inhabitants of neighbouring Fitzrovia, was a tremendous success, not break­ ing up until the early hours. It was, Picasso told Duncan Grant, 'the party he had been looking for ever since he had been in England'.84

Always a reluctant traveller abroad, Picasso was eager to return home, having been informed by Paul Rosenberg that Renoir was due in Paris on 3rd August and had expressed a desire to meet him: Picasso told Clive Bell that he hoped to make Renoir's portrait.ss His final engagement in London was a farewell lunch he gave for Bell at the Savoy on 2nd August, followed by a preview of the exhibition French Art 1914-1919 at Heal's Mansard Gallery in Tottenham Court Road, organised by Osbert and Sacheverell Sitwell, in association with the Paris dealer Leopold Zborowski. 86 The Sitwells' unrivalled tal­ ent for publicity ensured that the exhibition was widely noticed, reviving some of the controversies about modern French art that had erupted in London before the War. Picas­ so himself was represented in the show, although it was chiefly notable for introducing the British public to the work of Modigliani and Utrillo. Bell's final task was to conduct the Picassos on a shopping expedition in the West End.  Under Olga's supervision, her husband was to be kitted out as an English gentleman - 'so far, at any rate, as an English gentleman is a matter of shoes, hats and ties'.87 After visiting tailors, boot­ makers and hatters inJermyn Street and Savile Row, they part­ ed in Bond Street and Bell walked back to Gordon Square with Picasso's final words ringing in his ears -"'Ecrivez de temps en temps, et -pensez a moi"'.88

During his last week in London Picasso  and the  Polunins had worked together on refreshing the sets for Parade, which Picasso complained had been so hurriedly and unsatisfactorily painted at the time of the original  production  in  Paris  that they required retouching before  almost  every  performance. The London premiere of Parade was finally given on 14th November 1919 as part of Diaghilev's autumn season at the Empire Theatre, Leicester Square.  Matisse, in London to work with the Polunins on his designs for Le Chant du Rossig­ nol, was in the first-night audience. 89 There was no repeat of the booing that had greeted the ballet's Paris premiere, as Massine reported to Picasso: 'Lepublique rie moins qu'a Paris, car mme pour savoir rire il Jaut avoir du talent mais on est tres bien dispose' .90 Picasso received an ecstatic account of Parade' s reception via Clive Bell, who, on an extended visit to  Paris, conveyed his  wife's impressions of its  first-night - 'the best thing I have ever seen on stage' - directly to the artist.91

1919 was an annus mirabilis for Diaghilev and, owing in large part to what Roger Fry called his 'genius for putting genuine works of art upon the British public', a crucial year for the growing appreciation of recent French art in Eng­ land.92 The Ballet's contribution to modernism was analysed not just in the music columns of the newspapers, but in liter­ ary reviews and art journals, including this Magazine.93 The success of La Boutique Fantasque certainly bolstered Derain's status as 'the hero of the hour in English art circles';94 while Picasso's association with Diaghilev undoubtedly helped to make his work more palatable to a sceptical public. Several English artists responded specifically to The Three-Cornered Hat: Laura Knight made  drawings  of the  dancers  backstage and from the stalls and Ethelbert White produced hand­ coloured prints of the performance to illustrate Cyril Beaumont's essay on the ballet.95 Others were not so impressed, neither by Picasso's designs -Mark Gertler 'did not like Picas­ so's ballet or even his scenery' - nor by the company he kept in London - C.R.W. Nevinson told Bell that a number of English painters were furious with him for having monopolised the artist.96 To a certain section of the English avant­ garde, suspicious of  his friendly  relations  with  Bloomsbury and its  circle, Picasso had become almost a traitor to modernism. Ezra Pound, who officiated as both music and art crit­ic of the New Age, lost no opportunity to denigrate the artist. He dismissed the curtain, scene and costumes for The Three­ Cornered Hat - 'the whole thing seemed the work of a man lacking intention, but who had had clever  ideas  here  and there' - and maintained that there was 'no reason  why  any­ body should  go to the Picasso  ballet  called  "Parade"'.97 Pound's ally, Wyndham Lewis, turned even more viciously against his former hero, characterising him as a miraculous pasticheur 'with all the shallowness of a very apt, facile, and fanciful child'.98 Throughout the 1920s it  was  Bell  and  Fry who remained Picasso's most  vocal  supporters  in  England  - the former supplied the introduction  to  his  substantial  one­ man exhibition at the Leicester Galleries in 1921 - as well as his continuing link with London.99  Not  until  the late  1930s, by which time Fry was dead and Bell less in sympathy with the tenor  of Picasso's  art,  did the  artist find, in Roland  Penrose, an English  champion  of comparable  influence.

Although from time to time, between the wars, Picasso expressed a wish to return to London, he did not do so and his second and last visit took place in November 1950 when he attended the aborted Sheffield Peace Conference. Penrose was his host in London and, with his wife, Lee Miller, at his Sussex home, Fawley Farm, Chiddingly. A plan to see the Bells and Duncan Grant at nearby Charleston was unaccountably put off by Vanessa Bell. Of those friends who had figured in his 1919 visit Picasso saw only Lydia  Lopokova, by then the widow of Maynard Keynes, in her house at 46 Gordon Square, the setting for the party he 'had been looking for' during that memorable summer thirty years before. Did she still dance, Picasso asked the fifty-eight year old Lopokova. She did; and together they danced in the street.100

For help in the preparation of this article, the authors wish to thank John Richard­ son and Marilyn McCully; Mrs Loma Polunin; Adrian Goodman; Anne Baldassari, director, Laurence Madeline, former curator, and Sylvie Fresnault, archivist, Musee Picasso, Paris; Jane Pritchard, curator of dance, Theatre Museum, London; Susan Scott, archivist, Savoy Hotel, London; Rachel Hayes, archives officer, Royal Opera House, London; and Marijke Booth, archivist, Christie's, London. Quotations from Clive Bell's unpublished letters are reproduced by pennission of the Society of Authors on behalf of the Estate of Clive Bell. Throughout, original spelling has been retained in quotations from letters and documents. Works by Picasso © Succession Picasso/DACS 2006. References to C. Zervos: Pablo Picasso, 33 vols., Paris 1932--'78, are cited as Z. followed by volume number and entry number.

1 The plaque reads: 'IN THIS BUILDING PABLO PICASSO PAINTED THE BACKDROP FOR DIAGHILEV'S PRODUCTION OF MASSINE'S BALLET LE TRICORNE 1919'. It was designed by John Skelton and unveiled by Ninette de Valois on 9th December 1983.

2 Errors occur in most accounts of the artist's visit to London in 1919: for example, all three of Picasso's major biographers to date clainI that the first London performance of Parade was in July 1919 and that the artist was in the audience; see R. Penrose: Picasso. His Life and Art, London 1958, p.210; P. O'Brian: Pablo Ruiz Picasso. A Biography, London 1976, p.238; and P. Daix: Picasso. LA vie intime et l'oeuvre, Paris 1987, p.176. A detailed chapter on the visit, incorporating some of the material presented here, will be included in the forthcoming third volume of John Richardson's biography of Picasso. 

3 For the most complete and fully illustrated discussions of The Three-Cornered Hat, see D. Cooper: Picasso Theatre, New York 1987 (2nd. ed.), PP-37-43 and pis. 148-234; P. Durey and B. Leal, eds.: exh. cat. Picasso. Le Trirome, Lyon (Musee des Beaux-Arts) 1992; andJ. Palau i Fabre: Picasso. De los ballets al drama (191;--1927), Barcelona 1999, pp.132- 151 and pls.385-487. For a useful account of the ballet's reception in London, see D. Chadd and J. Gage, eds.: exh. cat. The Diaghilev Ballet in England, Norwich (Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts) and London (Fine Art Society) 1979-80, pp.23-28.

4 A possible exception is a pen-and-ink drawing of a young girl, perhaps seen in the Covent Garden market, holding an apple in her outstretched hand (the artist's heirs; Z.III, 350), inscribed 'Londres 1919', which  has no obvious connection to the Russian Ballet. A sketchbook produced by C. Rowney & Co., presumably purchased in London, contains shopping lists and London addresses alongside miscellaneous drawings which have been dated to  1924; see A. Glimcher and M. Glimcher, eds.: je Suis le Cahier. The Sketchbooks of Picasso, London and New Haven 1986, no.85, p.324. See also note 64 below.

5 For Picasso's drawings of Massine and Lopokova in La &utique Fantasque , see Z.III, 338-42 and Z.XXIX, 426; for his drawings of rehearsals in London, see Z.III, 343-49 and Z.XXIX, 375,408-11, 415 and 425. For another drawing of two dancers, unrecorded in Zervos, see T. Wolfe: exh. cat. Picasso: The Cltissical Years 191.,1925 , Little Rock (Arkansas Art Center) 1987, no.5 (repr.) which is inscribed 'Picasso Londres  19'.

6 For the history of Diaghilev's Russian Ballet in England, see C.W. Beaumont : The Diaghilev Ballet in London, London 1940; S. Grigioriev: The Diaghilev Ballet 1909-1929, London 1953; and L. Garafola: Diaghilev's Ballets Russes, New York 1989. A useful anthology of contemporary press reviews and memoirs is contained in N. MacDonald : Diaghilev Observed by Critics in England and the United States, 1911-1929, New York and London  1975.

7 Letter from C.Bell to Mary Hutchinson, 3rd October 1918 (Harry Ransom Human­ ities Research Center, University of Texas at Austin; hereafter cited as HRHRC). Fry had already proposed to Diaghilev that he, Duncan Grant and others, under the auspices of the Omega Workshops, collaborate on the design of a new production for the Ballet; letter from R. Fry to V. Bell, 19th September 1918 (Tate Archives, London). Neither this, not the exhibition of Massine's collection - which in 1917, while the Ballet was in Rome, had been shown at the Teatro Costanzi -came to fruition.

8   Letter from C. Bell to M. Hutchinson, 3rd October 1918 (HRHRC).

9 Idem, 5th October 1918 (HRHRC); see also letter from Dorothy Bussy to Andre Gide, 9th October (1918), in J. Lambert, ed.: Correspondance Andre Gide Dorothy Bussy, Paris 1979, I, p.132.

10 For the Sitwells' party, see A. 0. Bell, ed.: The Diary of Virginia Woolf. Volume I: 1915-1919, London 1977, pp.201-02; for Shearrnan's party, see 0. Sitwell: Laughter in the Next Room, London 1949, pp.17-24; and R. Shone: Bloomsbury Portraits, London 1993 (2nd ed.), p.183 .

11 C. Bell: 'The New Ballet', New Republic (30th July 1919), p.414.

12 J. Richardson in his A U.fe (If Picasso. Volume II: 190';-1917,London 1996, pp.308-ro, gives Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson rather than Sydney-Turner as the purchaser of Woman c.ombing her hair.

13 Olga Kokhlova is depicted in Les Sylphides, along with Lubov Tchernicheva and her particular friend Lydia Lopokova, in a drawing by Picasso made after a photograph (1919; Musee Picasso, Paris; Z.III, 352).

14 Letter from S. Diaghilev to P. Picasso, 18th October 1918 (Musee Picasso Archives, Paris; hereafter cited as MPA).

15 Postcard from P. Picasso to S. Diaghilev, [14th November 1918] (Fonds Kochno, Bibliotheque de!'Opera, Paris).

16 For the Ballet's sojourn in Spain and the genesis of The Three-Cornered Hat, see exh. cat:Espana y los ballets russes, Granada (Fundaci6n Manuel de Falla) 1989.

17 De Falla wrote to Diaghilev on 30th April 1919 to express his pleasure at Picasso's involvement in the ballet: 'La distribution des nlles me semble magn!fique etj' en dis autant pour notre c.ollaborateur peintre. Je me rappelle bien dujour ou -au Palace [Hotel, Madrid] - nous avons par/e avec Picasso du "Corregidor" et suis ravi de l'avoir avec nous'. (Pierpont Morgan Library, New York).

18 Letter from S. Diaghilev to P. Picasso, 15th April 1919, in L. Madeline: exh. cat. Les archives de Picasso.  'Onest ce que l'ongarde!', Paris (Musee Picasso) 2003, p.159.

19 The fee was exactly double the five thousand francs Picasso had been paid to design Parade two years earlier; see R. Butlde: In Search ef Diaghilev, London 1956, p.94. Ten thousand francs seems to have been  the standard rate Diaghilev offered his most prestigious designers in the post-War years. In September 1919 he signed a contract with Matisse for the same sum for Le Chant du Rossignol and Michel Larionov and Derain were paid identical amounts for Chout (1921) and Jack-in-the-Box (1926) respectively; see Garafola,  op. cit. (note 6), p.256. It is worth mentioning that the central portion of the drop-curtain for The Three-Cornered Hat, a permanent feature of the Four Seasons restaurant in the Seagram Building, New York, since it opened in 1959, was sold by Diaghilev to Paul Rosenberg in 1928 for 175,000 francs.

20 Letter from S. Diaghilev to P. Picasso, [12th May 1919] (MPA).

 21 Letter from S. Diaghilev to M. de Falla, ioth May 1919 (Archivo Manuel de Falla, Granada).

22 Telegram from S. Diaghilev to P. Picasso, 16th May 1919 (MPA); and information rfom the Picassos’ London identity books (MPA).

23 Bills amounting to £147.138.5d. from the Picassos' stay at the Savoy are preserved in MPA.

24 A luncheon to publicise The Three-Cornered Hat was given by Diaghilev on 18th July in the White Room (now the Savoy's famous River Room) for fourteen people, the food, cocktails, wine, flowers, cigars and cigarettes costing just over £18 (Savoy Hotel Archives, London); see also C. Tappolet, ed.: Correspondence Ansermet Strawinski (1914-1967), Geneva 1991,1, p. 135.

25 A. O. Bell, op. cit. (note 10), p.290.

26 'Dry Point': '"Your Artistic London." Picasso on the Beauty of the Streets', Weekly Dispatch (1st June 1919), p.2; the article is illustrated by a photograph of the artist.

27 For example, see C. Bell: 'London Posters' (letter) Athenaeum (5th September 1919), p.854. E. McKnight Kauffer, the leading poster designer in Britain between the wars, reproduced his own copy of the poster in The Art of the Poster, London 1924, p.172.

28 Letter from C. Bell to V. Bell, [early May 1919] (Tate Archives, London).

29 Letter from L. Strachey to D. Carrington, 9th June 1919, in P. Levy, ed.: Letters of Lytton Strachey, London 2005, p.441; letter from C. Bell to M. Hutchinson, [mid June 1919] (HRHRC); and postcard, idem, [20th June 1919] (HRHRC).

30 J. Douglas-Home: Violet: The Life and Loves of Violet Gordon Woodhouse, London 1996, p.182.

31 See, for example, N. Nicolson andj. Trautmann, eds.: The Letters of Virginia Woolf Volume II, 1912-1922: The Question of Things Happening, London 1976, p.361; Levy, op. cit. (note 29), p.436; and R. Marlar, ed.: Selected Letters of Vanessa Bell, London i993,p.231.

32 Entry in Lady Ottoline Morrell's visitors' book, Garsington Manor, for 28th July 1919 (British Library, London); see also O. Picasso to Lady O. Morrell, [mid-July 1919] (HRHRC).

33 Letter from C. Bell to M. Hutchinson, 19th May 1919 (HRHRC). For Derain'searlier visits to London, see R. Labrusse and J. Munck: 'Andre Derain in London (1906-07): letters and a sketchbook', the burlington magazine 146 (2004), pp.243-60; and E. Vegelin van Claerbergen and B. Wright, eds.: exh. cat. Andre Derain: The London Paintings, London (Courtauld Institute of Art Gallery), 2005. For further details of his 1919 visit, see J. Beechey: 'A Portrait by Derain after Julia Margaret Cameron', the burlington magazine 145 (2003), pp.520-23.

34 Letter from R. Fry to V. Bell, 23rd May 1919, in D. Sutton, ed.: Letters of Roger Fry, London 1972, II, p.452.

35 Beaumont, op. cit. (note 6), p. 136.

36 C. Bell: Old Friends, London 1956, p. 171.

37 Letter from D. Grant to V. Bell, 6th June 1919 (Tate Archives, London); and C. Bell,  op. cit. (note 36), p.171.

38 Letter from C. Bell to M. Hutchinson, 9th July 1919 (HRHRC); and letter from A. Derain to S. Diaghilev, 3rd July 1919 (Fonds Kochno, Bibliotheque de l'Opera, Paris).

39 Later in 1919, Vladimir Polunin mounted twenty-one of these photographs in a leather-bound album, into which he also inserted a painted sketch of the set of The Three-Cornered Hat, which he dedicated and sent to Picasso (MPA). The 'Album Polunin' was reproduced in full in Durey and Leal, op. cit. (note 3), pp.79-89 (where folio 6 recto and folio 8 recto are printed in reverse) and in J. Clair, ed.: exh. cat. Picasso, 1917-1924. The Italian Journey, Venice (Palazzo Grassi) 1998, pp.106-11. A set of negatives and prints of these photographs, and of several hitherto unpublished images (including Fig 12 here), remain in a private collection.

40 See A. Baldassari: exh. cat. Picasso-Dora Maar, Paris (Musee Picasso) 2006, pp. 119-21.

41 V. Polunin: The Continental Method of Scene Painting, London 1927, p. 56. Some of the unease between Diaghilev and Derain noted by Polunin can probably be attributed to Diaghilev's reservations about the designs for La Boutique. They may also have been the cause of remarks, reported by Massine to Diaghilev, that prompted an aggrieved letter from the latter to Picasso: 'Massine m'a fait un discours pathetique sur la decadence de mon gout et de mon activite se basant sur la phrase que Derain et toi vous lui avez dit - que "Diaghilev fait ce qu'on montre aux Folies Berg eres seulement le bas on le fait mieux". Si toi ou Derain me l'aviez dit vous-meme, je vous aurais explique, que par le moyen de ces pauvres lampes vertes je pensais adoudr un peu la difference  epouvantable qu'il y a entre le beau d ecor de Derain d'un c et e de la musique banale de l'adagio, accompagn ee par la Choreo graphie dans le gout de [Enrico] Cecchetti de l'autre. Je me suis certainement tromp e car toi et Derain vous le trouvez ainsi  e seulement ce qui m'est d esagr eable c'est avaler les le eons queje re eois de mon propre  el eve -  e e me d ecourag e; letter from S. Diaghilev to P. Picasso, n.d. [late May/early June 1919], in Madeline,  op. cit. (note 18), p. 159. 42 For Picasso's studies for the decor, see Z.III, 307, 309-10 and Z.XXIX, 349-51, 353-65, 378-85, 389-92, 404-05 and 407; for further studies, not in Zervos, see M. Richet: The Mus ee Picasso, Paris. Volume II: Drawings, watercolours, gouaches, pastels, London 1986, nos.1632, 1634, 1636, 1650 (recto), 1638, 1664-65 and 1670.

43 Polunin, op. cit. (note 41), p.54

44 Ibid., P.54

45 M. McCully: 'Picasso and Le Tricorne: A Synthesis of Innovation and Neo-Classi cism' in: Miscel-lania en hommetatge a Joan Ainaud de Lasarte II, Montserrat 1999, pp.271-80.

46 Cooper,  op. cit. (note 3), p.41.

47 Grigoriev,  op. cit. (note 6), p. 148.

48 Cooper,  op. cit. (note 3), p.42.

 49 For Picasso's costume designs, see Z.III, 331-37, Z.VII, 1378 and Z.XXIX, 370-74, 376-77, 379-80, 386-88, 393-95, 398, 400-03 and 406; for other studies not in Zervos, see Richet, op. cit. (note 42), nos. 1675 (verso), 1686 (verso), 1710-11 and 1715-19. Cooper, op. cit. (note 3), p.209, reproduces two pages from Picasso's notebook (the artist's heirs) fisting props and accessories for which he was responsible.

50 J. Drummond: Speaking of Diaghilev, London 1997, p.98.

51 T. Karsavina: Theatre Street, London 1930, p.304.

52 Grigoriev, op. cit. (note 6), pp. 147-48. The costumes were made by C. Alias.

53 L. Massine: My Life in Ballet, London 1968, p.40.

54 Ibid., p. 142.

55 Letter from S. Diaghilev to M. de Falla, ioth May 1919 (Archivo Manuel de Falla, Granada).

56 For Picasso's studies for the curtain, see Z.III, 302-06, 308, and Z.XXIX, 347-48, 35i~52 and 366-69; for other studies in Zervos, see Richet, op. cit. (note 42), nos. 1630-31, 1657, 1662 (verso) and 1663. A further study, hitherto unrecorded in the literature on the ballet, was bought by Maynard Keynes from the Chelsea Book Club, London, in December 1919; see D. Scrase and P. Croft: exh. cat. Maynard Keynes. Collector of pictures, books and manuscripts, Cambridge (Fitzwilliam Museum) 1983, cat.85, p.58, repr. Although Picasso discarded the lozenge-shaped decorations that he originally envisaged as surrounds for the main image, he used one of these for his collage Guitar (1919; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Z.II, 570).

57 S. Sitwell: The Hunters and the Hunted, London 1947, p. 109.

58 S. Sitwell: 'An Appreciation of Leonide Massine' in Massine. Camera Studies by Gordon Anthony, London 1939, p.20. In a later account of either this or a separate visit to Floral Street, Sitwell described Picasso sitting on the curtain and having his lunch, with a bottle of wine standing on the canvas where he had painted a still life of a sherry bottle and glasses; Drummond, op. cit. (note 50), p.277.

59 Letter from C. Bell to J.M. Keynes, [July 1919] (Modern Archives, King's College, Cambridge).

60 MacDonald, op. cit. (note 6), p.232.

61 Polunin, op. cit. (note 41), p.55.

62 See Penrose, op. cit. (note 2), pp.62 and 211.

63 Letter from C. Bell to M. Hutchinson, 9th July 1919 (HRHRC).

64 A sketchbook dated to 1921 contains two drawings identified by Elizabeth Cowling (see E. Cowling: Picasso. Style and Meaning, London 2002, p.421) as depicting Dionysus from the Parthenon pediment; see B. Leal, ed.: Musee Picasso. Carnets: catalogue des dessins, Paris 1996, I, no.23, 45 (verso), 46 (verso)/47 (recto), pp.310-11. A sketchbook used in 1922 contains drawings of Leto, Dione and Aphrodite; see ibid., no.24, 2or and 2ir, p.318.

65 On 4th July Paul Rosenberg wrote to Picasso with the news that the artist's parrot, which he had been looking after, had died that morning, and thanking him for a postcard he had received the same day: 'je me souviens fort bien de l'Hotel Mamet Trafalgar Square, represente sur la carte, y habitez vous maintenant, ou y peignez vous la vue de Trafalgar Square; letter from P. Rosenberg to P. Picasso, 4th July 1919, in Madeline, op. cit. (note 18), p.279.

66 Letter from P. Rosenberg to P. Picasso, 17th June 1919 (MPA). The sale of The Well-known Collection of Choice Modem Pictures & Drawings Chiefly of the Barbizon and Dutch Schools and Works by Old Masters of the Late Sir George A. Drummond, K. CM. G., of Montreal was held at Christie's, King Street, London, on 26th and 27th June. The annotated sale catalogue in Christie's Archives, London, shows that Rosenberg bought neither of the Daumiers (nos.25 and 26, both titled Troisieme Classe), nor the Degas (no.27, The Artist in His Studio), nor the Monet (no.84, The Poppy Field, 1887); but he did purchase no.56, A View of Holland, by J.B. Jongkind, for £199.10s. od.

67 A drawing, taken from a photograph, of Diaghilev and his American lawyer Alfred Seligsberg (Musee Picasso, Paris; Z.III, 301), was probably also made in London. 68 R. Shone, ed.: exh. cat. The Art ofBloomsbury, London (Tate Gallery) 1999, p.255.

69 See CA. Hess: Sacred Passions: The Life and Music of Manuel de Falla, Oxford 2005, p.119.

70 Letter from M. Asquith to S. Diaghilev, 23rd July 1919 (New York Public Library for the Performing Arts); letter from C. Bell to M. Hutchinson, 9th July 1919 (HRHRC); and letter from Vivien Eliot to M. Hutchinson, [16th July 1919], in V. Eliot, ed.: The Letters of T.S. Eliot, Volume 1:1989-1922, London, pp.319-20.

71 Beaumont, op. cit. (note 6), p. 143-44.

72 L. Sokolova: Dancing for Diaghilev, London i960, p. 142. 73 Letter from C. Bell to Jacqueline and P. Picasso, 6th October i960 (MPA). For a similar version of these remarks, contained in a contemporaneous letter from C. Bell to John Richardson, see J. Richardson: 'L'Epoque Jacqueline', in exh. cat. Late Picasso, London (Tate Gallery), 1988, p.30. Richardson suggests that this refers to the first night of The Three-Cornered Hat, but this took place after Lopokova's flight from the Ballet.

74 '"The Three-Cornered Hat". Russian Ballet at the Alhambra', The Times (23rd July 1919), p.10.

75 Review by E. Newman in the Observer (27th July 1919); and unsigned review in Tatler (13th August 1919). For further reviews of The Three-Cornered Hat in London in 1919 and 1920, see F. Baldwin: 'Critical Response in England to the Work of Designen for Diaghilev's Russian Ballet, 1911-1929', unpublished MA thesis (Courtauld Institute of Art, London, 1980) I, pp.36-40. 76 Polunin, op. cit. (note 41), p.56.

77 W.A. Propert: The Russian Ballet in Western Europe, 1909-1920, London 1921, p.55.

78 Ibid., pp.55-56.

79 C.W. Beaumont: Impressions of the Russian Ballet 1919: The Three-Cornered Hat, London 1919^.17.

80 See R. Buckle: Diaghilev, London 1979, pp.3 59-60. The king saw The Three Cornered Hat on 14th November 1919, during Diaghilev's autumn season at the Empire Theatre.

81 The Picassos' invitation is preserved as part of the Bell-Picasso correspondence, MPA.

82 C. Bell, op. cit. (note 36), p. 172; and letter from J.M. Keynes to Florence Keynes, 6th August 1919, in R. Skidelsky: John Maynard Keynes. Hopes Betrayed, 1883-1920, London 1983, p.380. Bell's memory was at fault in suggesting that Lopokova attended the party.

83 C. Bell, op. cit. (note 36), p. 172.

84 Letter from D. Grant to V. Bell, [30th July 1919] (Tate Archives, London).

85 Letter from C. Bell to M. Hutchinson, 4th August 1919 (HRHRC). In the event, Renoir was too frail to make the journey from Cagnes to Paris. Following the artist's death four months later, Picasso drew a portrait of him from a photograph (Musee Picasso, Paris; Z.III, 413).

86 The poster for the exhibition gives the opening date as 9th August, but it seems to have been on general view before that date; it was reviewed by 'M.S.P.' in the burlington magazine 35 (1919), pp.120-25.

87 Letter from C. Bell to M. Hutchinson, 4th August 1919 (HRHRC).

88 Ibid.

89 Letter from V. Bell to R. Fry, 15th November 1919 (Tate Archives, London).

90 Letter from L. Massine to P. Picasso, 22nd November 1919, in Madeline, op. cit. (note 18), p.165. This was the last season in which Parade was performed by Diaghilev's company.

91 Letter from V. Bell to C. Bell, 14th November 1919 (Tate Archives, London). Picasso invited Bell to lunch to meet his two collaborators on Parade, Cocteau and Satie, an occasion which he commemorated in his drawing: The artist's sitting room, rue de la Boitie:Jean Cocteau, Olga, Erik Satie, Clive Bell, 21st November 1919 (Musee Picasso, Paris; Z.III, 427). When read out in translation to the artist, Vanessa Bell's account of Parade 'had an immense success; & Picasso showed himself a good deal touched'; letter from C. Bell to V. Bell, 20th November 1919 (Tate Archives, London).

92 R. Fry: 'The Scenery of "La Boutique Fantasque'", Athenaeum (13th June 1919), p.466.

93 R. Fry: 'M. Larionow and the Russian Ballet', the burlington magazine 35 (1919), pp.112-13.

94 D. Sutton: Andre Derain, London 1959, p.34. 95 For example, see Chadd and Gage, op. cit. (note 3), no.55, p.27; and Beaumont, op. cit. (note 79).

96 Letter from M. Gertler to S.S. Koteliansky, [August 1919], in N. Carrington, ed: Mark Gertler. Seleded Letters, London 1965, p.175; and, for Nevinson, letter from C. Bell to M. Hutchinson, 20th June 1919 (HRHRC). Although early in Picasso's stay Gertler saw the artist at the ballet looking like a fat little waiter', and reported second-hand Picasso's comment that 'all English art [is] just pretty and sentimental', the two do not seem to have met in London; letter from M. Gertler to Lady O. Morrell, 29th May 1919 (HRHRC); and letter from M. Gertler to S.S. Kotelianksy, [June 1919], in Carrington, ibid., p.172.

97 'William Atherling' [E. Pound]: 'At the Ballet', New Age (16th October 1919), p.412; and ibid., 'Music', New Age (18th December 1919), p. 112.

98 W. Lewis: The Caliph's Design, London 1919, p.56.

99 C. Bell: 'Preface', Catalogue of an Exhibition of Works by Pablo Picasso, London (Leicester Galleries) 1921, pp.5-10. For further discussion of the Bloomsbury critics' writings on Picasso, see J. Beechey: 'Defining Modernism: Roger Fry and Clive Bell in the 1920s' in Shone, op. cit. (note 68), pp.39-51.

100 M. Keynes, ed.: Lydia Lopokova, London 1982, p.28.