Fanny Cerrito and Antonio Guerra in Le Lac des fées. Lithograph coloured by hand by Erxleben after a drawing by Mrs Philip Barnard, 1840.

A dancer stands on pointe, wearing a white and blue dress; her partner, dressed in a brown skirted tunic, has his arm around her waist. Lithograph coloured by hand 1840
Against a landscape with hills and trees, two dancers stand beside a small pond. The girl stands on point facing the viewer, her right arm held out and her left across her body. Her blonde hair is severely dressed with a rose low on her left side. She wears an off-the-shoulder white blouse, the neckline and arm bands edged with blue, and between the breasts is a posy of white flowers. Below the breasts, the bodice is blue. The bell-shaped, calf-length white skirt has blue lines around the hem; over this is a the white overskirt striped with fine blue vertical bands, which reaches to above the knee. Beside her stands her partner, his weight on his right leg, his left crossed in front; his right arm is around her partner's waist and his left arm is curved above his head. He wears a brown skirted tunic, reaching to lower thigh, with long sleeves and square neck. The neck, hem and cuffs are bound in black and the body and upper sleeve are painted with black to simulate slashing; on the elbow is a matching puff similarly painted. Around his waist is a black belt. On the tree to the left of the print hangs a white veil.

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.

Historical significance: 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.
In the days before photography, such lithographs were expensive souvenirs, bought by the individual dancer's admirers.

Hebe Saunders credited as Mrs Philip Barnard
Ackermann as R. Ackermann

The print records the ballet Le Lac des fées (The Fairy Lake), choreographed by Antonio Guerra for Fanny Cerrito when she first danced in London in 1840. Her success was phenomenal - no other dancer of the time was so readily or warmly accepted by the London audience. Queen Victoria, always a keen ballet goer, came to the second performance and was seen to show 'the most marked approbation' of her dancing.
Cerrito danced the fairy Zéïla, whose immortality is embodied in her magic veil. Albert, danced by Guerra, sees her bathing and falls in love with her, stealing her scarf as a souvenir, and unwittingly depriving her of her immortality. The scarf hangs on the tree to the left.
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 reviewers raved over her lightness and how, with discreet help from Guerra, she seemed to float and fly through the air.

E.4989-1968