The Celebrated Spanish Dance Las Boleras de Cadiz danced by Marie Guy Stephan. Lithograph coloured by hand by J H Lynch after C Graf 1844

Female dancer standing on a terrace beyond which are Italinate buildings. She is facing left, head in profile, her right arm curved above her head, her left arm down; in her hands she holds; she stands on her right turned out leg and with her left extended to the front with pointed foot. Her hair is severely dressed, and is pulled back into a bun surrounded by a yellow frill at the back. Her black bodice joins straight onto the short sleeves, is cut very low at the front and continues into a point at centre front; down the centre front is a 'gold' strip and the neckline and sleeves are trimmed with black lace. Her knee-length, bell-shaped palest pink skirt is trimmed above the hem with a deep flounce of black lace. On her feet she wears black ballet slippers with no ribbons. The print is cut across on the top corners.

Bequeathed by Lady Mary Evans

Marie Guy Stéphan dancing The Celebrated Spanish Dance Las Boleras de Cadiz at Her Majesty's Theatre, London, in 1844. Marie Guy-Stéphan was born in France in 1818 and danced in Paris and London where she was particularly famous for her Spanish dances; appropriately, she later became prima ballerina in Madrid.
In the left background is the Scuola di San Marco in the Campo San Giovanni e Paulo, Venice.
Painting S.103-1986 is an anonymous oil painting after the print, but omitting the Scuola di San Marco.
The print has been cut down, thus losing the name of the printer, M & N Hanhart and publisher, William Spooner

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.

National dances and settings were popular in the 1840s as audiences became increasingly aware of ‘abroad’ and exotic locations. Spain was especially popular and national dances, like the Cachucha and Bolero, were often featured in dance programmes in London in the mid 19th century. Marie Guy-Stéphan was particularly famous for her Spanish dances; appropriately, she later became prima ballerina in Madrid.
Her traditional Spanish dance costume shares the bell-shaped skirt and off-the-shoulder neckline with mid-19th century fashionable dress, but the deep flounce of black lace on the skirt, black bodice with short frilled sleeves and the hair drawn back into a cone tipped with a frill are characteristically Spanish - as are the give-away castanets that she holds in her hands.

S.2624-1986