Portrait of Olga de Haas

Person depicted Olga de Haas (1944-1978)
Role Gone with the swans
Artist Diana van den Berg-Blomjous (1923-1997)
Medium Oil on hardboard
Year 1980

Gone with the swans captures the exceptional gifts of the prima ballerina Olga de Haas. Trained by Sonia Gaskell among others, she danced the great ballets, including Swan Lake and Giselle, the latter with the world-famous Rudolf Nureyev. With the title of this portrait, its maker Diana van den Berg-Blomjous conveys how the career of Olga de Haas was cut short. She died at the age of thirty-four “of exhaustion”, with liver and kidney disease. The dance critic Ine Rietstap described the memory the portrait preserves: “fragile, lyrical, young and beautiful.”