Finally, 42 years after it was bought for the nation, the largest canvas designed by Pablo Picasso was today hung in the institution it now calls home ahead of an autumn exhibition.
The theatrical front cloth measuring 10.4 metres (34ft) by 11.7 metres was carefully installed in a gallery at the V&A in London as part of a show examining the Russian ballet impresario Sergei Diaghilev and the dance company he founded, Ballets Russes.
The piece has been seen infrequently in public and never at the V&A. "It's really significant. It's wonderful to have it here," said the exhibition's curator, Jane Pritchard. One of the last times it was seen in the UK was when it was unrolled at the Royal Opera House in 2003 as part of an appeal to raise money to help save the Theatre Museum. It stayed, though, on the floor.
Dramatic front cloths were used to help quieten the audience at the start of performances. "It was there to establish a mood," said Pritchard. "It was never meant to be seen for very long. The front curtain goes up, an overture is played and you see what is essentially a vast painting. It wowed audiences."
The canvas featuring two without-a-care women racing along a Brittany beach is a copy of Picasso's painting now in the Musée Picasso in Paris, Deux Femmes Courant sur la Plage, executed by a theatrical scene painter.
Pritchard said: "Diaghilev really liked front cloths. He liked the opportunity to get audiences settled for a production. When he saw Picasso's original painting he thought, 'That's just what I need.' "
The story goes that the cloth was painted "more or less overnight" and Picasso was so impressed with the work he signed it and dedicated it to Diaghilev.
It was first used during the 1924 Ballets Russes season in Paris, coinciding with the French capital hosting the Olympics that year, and became the opening front cloth for performances of the ballet Le Train Bleu. After two seasons it was folded up and was stored until a Paris exhibition in 1939 and then was unseen again until its auction in 1968 when the ballet critic Richard Buckle bought it for £69,000 and gave it to the nation.
The Picasso was today hung alongside an even bigger back cloth – one of the V&A's largest items at 10.2m by 15.7m – which was designed by the Russian artist Natalia Goncharova for the final scene of the 1926 performance of Firebird.
Today the two cloths, back to back, dominated the V&A gallery. Perhaps surprisingly the installations – the rigging and unrolling – were relatively stress free.
"Our technicians have learnt about these things," said Pritchard. "They've worked out what the structure needs to be when hanging it and the unrolling now goes quite smoothly. I'm not saying it's an easy thing but we've learnt what to do. We were well prepared and what could have been a horrid and tricky situation wasn't so."
The show, Diaghilev and the Golden Age of the Ballet Russes 1909-1929, will aim to show the company in all its splendid glory and explore his collaborations with everyone from Coco Chanel to Igor Stravinsky, as he determinedly strived to create the best, the most amazing total theatre.
When the V&A show opens on 25 September there will be about 300 objects on view at the museum including the extraordinarily daring original costumes, set designs, props, posters and scores.