Pavel Tchelitchew (1898-1957)

Stephen Tennant (the youngest son of Sir Edward Tennant, later Baron Glenconner of Glen) became an avid collector of Tchelitchew's work after becoming acquainted with the artist in Paris in the late 1920s. A Cecil Beaton photograph taken in 1938 shows Tennant surrounded by Tchelitchew's drawings of him. Tchelitchew's portraits of Beaton and his friend and patron, the poet Edith Sitwell, are now in the collection of London's National Portrait Gallery along with Beaton's photographs of Tchelitchew and Edith Sitwell. They were all equally charmed by Tennant. The energetic elegant young Englishman had himself studied art at the Slade School of Art before turning to ballet where he was taught by Léonide Massine, one of the great stars of Diaghilev's Ballet Russes.

The present picture was painted during the artist's blue, metamorphic period. Viewed in a certain light, the flowers may be seen to metamorphose into human heads.