Costume design by Wilhelm for a dancer in Aime Bertrand's ballet In A Star in Act III of The Bronze Horse, produced at the Alhambra, London, 1881.

Full length female figure with hands behind her back, wearing very low necked sleeveless pale purple costume, the neck trimmed with graduated gold points over pale orange points. The costume is fitted onto the hips where it is cut into graduated points; from beneath hangs a serrated-edged skirt in pale orange edged in gold, beneath which to the knee hang points each ending in a star. Around the neck is a star necklace, a star is fixed to each upper arm and on the head is a star crown. Pen and ink, watercolour and gold paint.

Cyril W. Beaumont Bequest

The costume was designed by Wilhelm for a dancer in M A Bertrand's ballet In A Star in Act III of The Bronze Horse, produced at the Alhambra, London, 1881.
The design was probably part of the London Archives of the Dance; the Archives never achieved an independent home and part of the collection was stored with Cyril Beaumont, where it became inextricably mixed with his own collection and came to the Museum as part of the Cyril Beaumont Bequest.

Historical significance: An example of design for the ballets at the Alhambra Theatre by the leading designer of his period. The ballets at the Alhambra and Empire Theatres are of great significance in the history of ballet in England, as they ensured the continuity of a ballet tradition in London between the Romantic ballet and the 'new' ballet of the Diaghilev Ballets Russes.

S.237-2000