Portrait of Alice B. Toklas by Pavel Tchelitchew (Paris, about 1927)
Gouache on paper, circa 1926–1928
National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution
Excerpt, Vladimir Dukelsky (Vernon Duke), Zephyr et Flore, “Theme”
Vernon Duke (Vladimir Dukelsky) was not the only one of his circle who would go on to work with Diaghilev’s Ballet Russe. So would another aristocratic Russian, the painter, Pavel Tchelitchew. They originally met in the same YMCA in Constantinople as ex-patriots where Vernon Duke first discovered Gershwin’s “Swanee.” Oddly, too, Duke had known pianist Allen Tanner from New York as part of Gershwin’s and Eva Gauthier’s circle.
Allen Tanner was your narrator’s cousin and used to speak at length about Pavel Tchelitchew when I was a young teenager. He also opened up the photo section of his copy of Parker Tyler’s The Divine Comedy of Pavel Tchelitchew, revealing the cover of the theater program that Tcheltichew designed for the premiere of Diaghilev’s Ode and for which he did the set designs.
Vernon Duke went home to No. 150 Blvd. Montparnasse and told Allen and Pavlik the news about auditioning his Piano Concerto for Diaghilev. Tyler gives us a view of this scene from both Tchelitchew’s and Dukelsky’s eyes (pg. 303):
“It is in the midst of expanding evenings at No. 150 that Vladimir Dukelsky, the pianist from The Lighthouse in Constantinople, renews his acquaintance with Tchelitchew and meets Tanner. In the “big, untidy” flat, where Pavlik paints in the living room and Allen plays on an upright (or, while the other is at work, on his piano muet), Dukelsky thinks that Tchelitchew, “all golden hair and plump rosy cheeks,” and the “pale, willowy” Tanner are an “odd pair.” They certainly are a pair of busy hosts, even if sometimes for customers who come to look at pictures and leave without buying…
Dukelsky finds at Tchelitchew’s the “small, silent” Pougni, the “pugnosed, peasantish” Tereshokovitch, County Lanskoy and Boris Shatzman. Nicholas Nabokov, with his tossed mane and visionary eyes, is already a friend of the house. One day Dukelsky (or rather Duke as he come to call himself) is introduced to “Valitchka” (Walter) Nouvel, Dighilev’s manager. Another day he plays his concerto to the “odd pair” and catches Pavlik, amid his compliments, giving Tanner a large wink.”
In 1923, Tchelitchew began to paint portraits of all the Paris avant-garde and gay elite. Gertrude Stein noticed his works in the 1925 Salon D’Automne, Basket of Strawberries (1925) and bought the entire contents of his studio. Tyler says on page 305 of The Divine Comedy of Pavel Tchelitchew, “To Duke, a casual observer, Tchelitchew is still manipulating a Bakst-Soudeikine manner, but this impression must be owing to pictures, possibly old stage designs, left lying around the studio…” It was in this ambiance that Vernon Duke would come to write Flore et Zephyr for Sergei Diaghilev.
Excerpt, Vladimir Dukelsky (Vernon Duke), Zephyr et Flore, “Theme”
Recent Comments