Design for a Stage Backcloth (Maeterlinck's 'Betrothal')

This backcloth was for a Gaiety Theatre production of 'The Betrothal', by Maurice Maeterlinck (1862 - 1949), first produced in 1921. Ricketts described it as a 'sky full of rolling planets where all is blue and mysterious'. It was the first theatre production he had worked on after the end of the First World War. Ricketts was strongly influenced by the Russian stage designer Leon Bakst (1866 - 1924), who worked for the Ballet Russes.