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.

A back cloth of ghostly white covers the entire rear wall, and the floor has a bleak, blinding pallor.

The collection of little wooden houses on Captain Shandy’s bowling-green was not a more perfect Proteus of a town than Pasquale’s back cloth. 

In the rather confined space between the footlights and the back cloth there came on a knight in armour. 

The back cloth was raised and we had before us a tranquil sea with two little islands sleeping under a sunset sky.