Elizabeth Violet Polunin (née Hart; 21 May 1887 – 1950) was a British artist and theatre designer, most notably for her work with Sergei Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes.[1] Polunin was born in Ashford, Kent and when she was aged 17 she went to Paris to study art at the Académie Colarossi under Lucien Simon and at the École des Beaux-Arts.[4] Diaghilev commissioned set designs and costumes from artists such as Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso, and they were to have a huge influence on Polunin.[3] When Picasso spent ten weeks in London during the summer of 1919 to produce designs for the company's production of The Three-Cornered Hat he worked in the Polunin's Floral Street studio in Covent Garden.[7] From 1924 onwards Elizabeth Polunin concentrated on portrait and landscape painting and exhibited at a series of solo shows in London, beginning in 1925.