Fanny Cerrito as Kathi in the ballet La Vivandière. Lithograph coloured by hand after J Bouvier, ca. 1845.

A dancer stands on a wooden bridge over a stream; in the background is a waterfall and mountains and, proper left, an Italianate farmhouse. She stands facing the viewer on her right leg, the left facing forwards, her right hand on her hip and left raised above her head and holding a pink-tinted banner with a 'gold' fringe on which is the word 'Victoire' and a flower. To the back of her head is a black 'halo' hat edged with red and with flowing red ribbons from the back; on the proper left side of the hair are small flowers. She wears a low-necked, long-sleeved blue bodice trimmed with 'gold' frogging, with a matching dolman jacket over the right arm; the knee-length red skirt is overlaid with a small white petticoat, caught up on her right side side. At her waist is a small barrel. On her feet are heelless red ankle boots with white fringe and buttons.

Bequeathed by Lady Mary Evans

The print shows Fanny Cerrito as Kathi in the ballet La Vivandière, choreographed by Cerrito and Arthur Saint-Léon, performed at Her Majesty's Theatre in 1844.

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 British lithographs are notable for capturing individual performers and their style, often clearly in a theatrical setting. They enshrine dance and its interpreters at one of its greatest periods.

The print shows the dancer Fanny Cerrito in a female adaptation of military costume, worn by the vivandières - the women who accompanied armies on campaign selling supplies and, as might be surmised from the little keg at her waist, liquor to the soldiers.
Her military-style jacket, with its gold braiding, worn over one shoulder, is characteristic of Hungarian national dress. National dances and settings were popular in the 1840s as audiences became increasingly aware of 'abroad' and exotic locations. Scotland, Spain, Hungary, Poland and the Balkans were all popular settings and some ballets were set as far afield as India, giving the opportunity for balleticized versions of national dances, like the Cachucha, mazurka, polka, polonaise, tarentella or Cracovienne.

S.2614-1986