Fanny Cerrito in Le Lac des fées. Lithograph coloured by hand by J S Templeton after a drawing by A de Valentini, 1840.

A girl wearing a white off-the shoulder, knee-length dress, floats above a gloomy lake; her hands hold the ends of a large veil which billows around and frames her upper body. On a cliff to the lower left stand a group of people with arms raised. Around the central figure float ghostly figures. The plate is cut across upper corners.

Given by Dame Marie Rambert

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 print probably records the ballet Le Lac des fées (The Fairy Lake), choreographed for Fanny Cerrito in 1840, when she first danced in London. In the first scene, a group of people find an enchanted lake where they see swans transformed into fairies. Albert falls in love with the fairy Zéïla and steals her scarf, the source of her immortality.
The critic of The Times was not impressed 'The effects were chiefly of the stamp that are seen in the first part of a pantomime, troops of "white-muslined" fairies fluttering about the stage, and going through the old business of wreath-waving.' But Cerrito was a sensation and many reviewers raved over her lightness and the way she seemed to float and fly through the air.

E.4987-1968