When Nureyev stood still: more than 25 years after Rudolf Nureyev posed for artist Jamie Wyeth, the portraits of the great gay dancer still captivate. (art).

When third-generation American master portraitist Jamie Wyeth approached Rudolf Nureyev about posing for a series of paintings at the height of his celebrity in 1974, the mercurial gay dance god barked out, "No, I have no time."

But three years later, while in New York City on tour with his Nureyev and Friends concerts, the dancer consented. "I don't know what changed his mind," says Wyeth, now 56, speaking of Nureyev's decision to pose for the 41 drawings and paintings on display through May 18 in "Capturing Nureyev: James Wyeth Paints the Dancer" at the Brandywine River Museum in Chadds Ford, Pa.

"Andy Warhol was letting me use one of his studios. Rudi came to see me and said, `Well, I am here,'" recalls Wyeth, doing a dead-on impression.

Like every other enterprise involving the tempestuous star, the portraiture project promised to be complicated. "Nureyev took class every morning at American Ballet Theatre," says Wyeth, "and I started to observe and realized that he was a perpetually moving target. I thought, Christ, I'll never get him to stand still." Wyeth then got the idea to use a matched torso double for Nureyev--who spied him eyeing the candidate.

Right in front of the other dancer, Nureyev bridled, "This piggy body for mine? No! I pose alone for my body. I do it."

Nureyev was so concerned over the exact anatomical depiction that Wyeth measured every inch of him with what the dancer called "tools of torture." "You measured so much you could make me a suit," Nureyev complained.

Wyeth didn't shrink from Nureyev's persona, including his sexuality. "He was very sexual, onstage and offstage," the artist remembers. "I didn't consciously bring out anything homoerotic; these things just naturally came out with him. He was a great flirt in general to everybody. He was a highly charged creature and his intensity was white-hot."

Nureyev's voracious sexuality was such that even though many knew he was gay, his legendary partnering with British prima ballerina Mar Fonteyn brought rumors a sexual relationship. In fact, his great love was the legendary Danish Erik Bruhn, director of the Royal Swedish Ballet--a classicist whose pristine style was ice to Nureyev's fire.

While Nureyev never publicly Acknowledged his sexual orientation, he was completely open with his friends, says Wyeth: "He had no feeling that his life was outrageous at all." Nor did Nureyev--himself a political refugee who defected from the Soviet Union in 1961 while on tour with the Kirov Ballet--feel outrage at society's repression of other gay artists. The gay community "meant nothing to him," says Wyeth. "The only thing that interested him was dance."

Nureyev's partying among the world's glamorous elite seemingly did not take a toll on his body for years until he became ill with AIDS. Even then, he continued to perform until, in 1993, his prodigious strength finally failed.

Working from "tons of sketches," Wyeth finished many of the paintings after Nureyev's death. While they lack the almost scientific accuracy of the original series, Wyeth argues the posthumous renderings are, in their way, just as true to life. "He really was a tragic figure," Wyeth says. "And he was also a hell of a lot of fun."

Whittington writes for Dance magazine and The Philadelphia Inquirer.