Nadia Benois (1896-1975). Russian-born artist and stage designer

Born in St Petersburg as Nadezhda Leontievna Benois, Nadia Benois came from an influential artistic family that included her architect father, Leon, and her uncle, Alexander Benois, the painter, stage designer and director of the Hermitage Museum. She trained at the St Petersburg Academy of Fine Arts and settled with her husband, the journalist and diplomat Jona Ustinov, in London in 1920 following the Russian revolution. It was in London that she gave birth to her son, the actor Peter Ustinov, in 1921.

Benois designed a number of important productions for British ballet companies during the 1930s, namely Antony Tudor’s Dark Elegies and Andrée Howard’s Lady into Fox, both for Ballet Rambert. In 1939 she also designed the Vic-Wells Ballet’s production of Marius Petipa’s The Sleeping Beauty (named The Sleeping Princess when first performed by the company). She died in 1975.