La Péri of the title is a fairy who assumes human form to test a man who has fallen in love with her after she appears to him in a dream. In Persian Mythology, a péri was superhuman being endowed with grace and beauty. In ballet of the 1840s, she was, like the sylphs and nymphs, an unattainable spirit, a symbol of escape from the prosaic and mundane world. The costume, with its short sleeves, jewelled chains and belts, looks more like a balleticised version of Indian costume than Persian, but the intention was to evoke exotic, far-away places, rather than a realistic recreation.
The ballet was written by Theophile Gautier in 1843 for the great ballerina Carlotta Grisi whom he adored. Like Giselle, which he also wrote for her, the role of the Péri encapsulated the two aspects of the Romantic ballet, the human girl and the unattainable spirit. Unattainable spirits were very popular in the Romantic era, the ultimate putting of a woman on a pedestal.
The print captures Grisi's dewy youthfulness and charm and helps explain her great popularity with audiences from London to St Petersburg.
Physical description
A room with, to either side, columns through which can be seen a lake, trees and mountains; standing 'outside' can be seen girls in ballet dress. In the centre foreground a dancer jumps, her legs stretched on the diagonal to her left, her arms angled above her head. On her severely dressed hair she wears a tiara of stars. Her dress has a small blue bodice fitted over the bust with deep V neck and vestigial sleeves, edged with 'jewels'. Down her midriff are lines of 'jewels' meeting a jewelled belt in a pointed 'jewelled' motif at the waist. The bell-shaped, knee-length skirt is formed of two tiers of white diaphanous fabric.
The print area is cut across the corners.
The title and print area have been cut from print and mounted separately
Date
1844. (made)
Artist/maker
John Brandard, born 1812 - died 1863 (artist)
Materials and Techniques
Tinted lithograph coloured by hand
Dimensions
Height: 342 mm at centre, Width: 276 mm at centre
Object history note
La Péri was a ballet choreographed by Jules Perrot for his protegée, Carlotta Grisi. It was first seen in Paris in 1843. Later that year, Eugène Coralli revived it in London, again with Grisi in the title role.
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.
Historical context note
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.
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.
Descriptive line
Carlotta Grisi in The Peri. Tinted lithograph coloured by hand by J Brandard, 1844.
Exhibition History
Dame Marie Rambert collection of ballet prints (Victoria and Albert Museum 07/03/1968-07/03/1968)
Materials
Paper; Watercolour; Lithographic ink
Techniques
Lithography; Hand colouring
Categories
Prints
Collection code
T&P
