page_title: Léon Bakst
section_title: Early life
hierarchical_section_title: Léon Bakst / Early life
caption_attribution_description: English: Léon Samoilovitch Bakst (1866-1924)
context_page_description: Léon Bakst – born as Leyb-Khaim Izrailevich Rosenberg, Лейб-Хаим Израилевич Розенберг was a Russian painter and scene and costume designer of Belarusian origin. He was a member of the Sergei Diaghilev circle and the Ballets Russes, for which he designed exotic, richly coloured sets and costumes.
context_section_description: Leyb-Khaim Izrailevich (later Samoylovich) Rosenberg was born in Grodno, into a middle-class Jewish family. As his grandfather was an exceptional tailor, the Tsar gave him a very good position, and he had a huge and wonderful house in Saint Petersburg. Later, when Leyb's parents moved to the capital, the boy Leyb would visit his grandfather's house every Saturday. He said that he had been very impressed as a youth by that house, always returning with pleasure.  At the young age of twelve, Lejb won a drawing contest and decided to become a painter, but his parents did not approve of this. 
  After graduating from gymnasium, he studied at the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts as a noncredit student, because he had failed the entry. He also worked part-time as a book illustrator, gaining admission into the Imperial Academy in 1883. At the time of his first exhibition (1889) he took the surname of "Bakst," based on his mother's maiden name. The surname "Rosenberg" was thought to be "too Jewish" and not good for business. At the beginning of the 1890s, Bakst exhibited his works with the Society of Watercolourists. 
  From 1893 to 1897 he lived in Paris, where he studied at the Académie Julian. He still often visited Saint Petersburg. After the mid-1890s, Bakst became a member of the circle of writers and artists formed by Sergei Diaghilev and Alexandre Benois, who in 1899 founded the influential periodical Mir iskusstva, meaning "World of Art." His graphics for this publication brought him fame.
caption: Bakst in 1916
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