Fellow ‘Whitechapel boy’, Mark Gertler employs a loose figurative approach in a carefully constructed ballet scene executed at the height of his admiration for Cézanne, partly fueled by his meetings with English critic and painter Roger Fry, which briefly drew him closer to the Francophile Bloomsbury painters. This composition is based on a performance of Le Carnaval at London’s Coliseum in October 1918 by Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, with Lydia Lopokova radiating energy as Columbine after a pirouette en pointe. She is flanked by her agile suitor Harlequin and the sad clown Pierrot, recognisable by their traditional costumes and characteristic poses.