Pauline Duvernay in costume for the Cachucha. Lithograph by R J Lane after a drawing by A E Chalon, 1840s.

The dancer stands with her back to the viewer, her head turned looking back over her right shoulder. She stands on her left leg with the right foot turned out to the side; her left hand is on her hip and her right is down to the side and in both hands she holds castanets. Her hair is severely dressed over the ears, where it is trimmed with roses over her right ear and, visible at the back, flowers over the left; at the back of the head the knot is covered in elaborate ribbon loops. Her off-the-shoulder dress has a band and flounce at the upper edge and the short sleeves are trimmed with lace. The bell-shaped skirt is calf-length with a deep flounce of lace at mid skirt and a narrower similar flounce reaching to the hem.

Given by Dame Marie Rambert

The print shows Pauline Duvernay in costume for the Cachucha, popularised by Fanny Elsser, which created the vogue for Spanish dances.
The print is part of the collection of dance prints amassed by Marie Rambert and her husband, Ashley Dukes in the first half of the 20th century. Eventually numbering 145 items, some of which had belonged to the ballerina Anna Pavlova, it was one of the first and most important specialist collections in private hands.
Rambert bought the first print as a wedding present but could not bear to give it away. As the collection grew, it was displayed in the bar of the Mercury Theatre, the headquarters of Ballet Rambert, but in 1968, Rambert gave the collection to the Victoria and Albert Museum; seven duplicates were returned to Rambert, but these are catalogued in Ivor Guest's A Gallery of Romantic Ballet, which was published before the collection came to the V&A. Although often referred to as a collection of Romantic Ballet prints, there are also important engravings of 17th and 18th century performers, as well as lithographs from the later 19th century, by which time the great days of the ballet in London and Paris were over.

The large souvenir prints of the Romantic ballet, issued in the 1830s and 1840s, are among the most evocative images of dance in the 19th century. Lithography, with its soft quality, enhanced by the delicate yet rich hand-colouring, was ideally suited to the subject - the ballerinas who dominated ballet in the mid-century and the romanticised settings in which they performed; style and subject were perfectly matched. The lithographs produced in London are notable for capturing the personality and style of individual performers in a theatrical setting. They are a fitting tribute to one of ballet's richest periods.
In the days before photography, such lithographs were expensive souvenirs, bought by the individual dancer's admirers.
Before the development of colour printing, the basic black and white prints were hand coloured. There is often considerable variation from one print to another, both in colour and quality of the work. The most important souvenir prints, such as this one, would only have been sent out to the best colourists, and it is often very difficult to tell the best hand colouring from early colour printing. In the days before photography, such lithographs were expensive souvenirs, bought by the individual dancer's admirers.

The Cachucha is a stylized Spanish dance, originally from Cuba, popularised by Fanny Elssler in Jean Coralli's 1836 ballet Le Diable Boîteaux (The Lame Devil). The dance covers a range of movements, sometimes gracefully calm, sometimes sprightly and sometimes impassioned hip swinging, making great use of the castanets.
When Pauline Duvernay danced the Cachucha in London in 1836, she had the greatest success of her career. The complex rhythms and varied moods of the choreography, plus the personal charm of the performer, enchanted an audience who were growing tired of pure ballet and fascinated by national dances from Spain or Eastern Europe. Duvernay is wearing the traditional dress of the stage cachucha - Spanish comb and mantilla, fitted bodice and full bell-shaped skirt, with flounces of black lace. Reports say that the costume was red, but most prints show it as pink.
Duvernay retired from the stage in 1837 when she married Stephens Lyne Stephens, supposedly the wealthiest commoner in England.

E.4999-1968