page_title: Maxime Dethomas
section_title: Theatre
hierarchical_section_title: Maxime Dethomas / Theatre
caption_attribution_description: English: Au théâtre des arts poster - Les dominos sur la musique de Couperin (1911) - Maxime Dethomas. Printed by Eugène Verneau. Premiered December, 1911.
context_page_description: Maxime-Pierre Jules Dethomas was a French painter, draughtsman, printmaker, illustrator, and was among the best known theater-set and costume designers of his era. As an artist, Dethomas was highly regarded by his contemporaries and exhibited widely, both within France and abroad. He was a regular contributor to the Impressionistes et Symbolistes, and a founding committee member of the Salon d'Automne. In 1912, he was awarded the Chevalier de la Légion d'honneur for his contributions to French art.
  During the latter part of his career, he is remembered for his work overseeing set and costume design for the Théâtre des Arts and the Paris Opera. His works appear in many important national collections, including the Musée d'Orsay, the Hermitage Museum and the National Gallery of Art. A large collection of his theatrically related work is held at the Bibliothèque-Musée de l'Opéra National de Paris. Dethomas is also remembered for his close friendship with the artist Henri Toulouse-Lautrec, his brother in-law Ignacio Zuloaga and his association with Les Nabis and other important Post-Impressionist and Symbolist artists and writers.
context_section_description: From 1910 to 1913, Dethomas worked under Jacques Rouché during his tenure at the Théâtre des Arts. Upon assuming management of the theater, Rouché enlisted the talents of several artists who had contributed to his magazine, La Grande Revue, including Jacques Dresa, René Piot and Maxime Dethomas, none of which had previously worked for the stage.
  As director of the services plastiques, Dethomas embarked on a career that would last for the remainder of his life. The Théâtre des Arts represented a major shift away from facile acting, shallow content and the painted-canvas drawing rooms of commercial theater that were the norm. The inaugural production, Le Carnaval des Enfants (1910), marked a major theatrical revolution by which Dethomas' settings accentuated line and colour, rather than a focus on painted detail and endless props. Against blue, ochre, grey and steel, black costumed characters created striking pictorial compositions in lighting effects that "varied like inflections in a conversation". 
  The Théâtre des Arts went on to present nearly twenty plays, including Jacques Copeau's adaptation of The Brothers Karamazov (1911), and the stage production of La Tragédie de Salomé (1912), both a popular and critical success. Dethomas' reputation as a set and costume designer was such that by early 1912, he was commissioned by the British aristocracy to design a set and costumes for a London masked ball with some two thousand guests. 
  Hired to direct and decorate at the Paris Opera in 1914, Rouché and Dethomas went on to offer fresh interpretation of old material and to make inroads into stale scenic convention. By 1917, Dethomas was also designing sets and costumes for the Comédie Française; the Théâtre Sarah-Bernhardt in 1919; the Théâtre Femina and Le Trianon in 1920; and the Opéra-Comique in 1926 as it celebrated Manuel de Falla's 50th birthday. With a program consisting of La Vida Breve, El Amor Brujo, and Master Peter's Puppet Show, Falla's close friend Ignacio Zuloaga and Dethomas collaborated to create sets and marionettes.
  During his seventeen years in the theatre, Dethomas was artistic designer for over fifty plays, ballets and operas, featuring many of the era's most notable actors, dancers, singers, playwrights and composers, including Roussel, Stravinsky and Ravel. In his colour schemes Dethomas used visual analogy paired with the play-writer's thematic intent, "the progression of each scene following perfectly the progression of the drama". Dethomas once wrote that above all else decor should be a good servant of the play and that a designer must get beyond a "painterly feel" to something more solid. Guillaume Apollinaire declared that Dethomas' influence on French Theatre had "transformed the art of scenery, costume design and staging."
caption: Théâtre des Arts poster for Les dominos sur la musique de Couperin (1911). In addition to this poster, Dethomas also created sets, costumes and a programme.
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