Fanny Cerrito in Le Toréador. Lithograph coloured by hand after a drawing by J Bouvier, 1840.

A townscape with buildings of various periods and styles; in the background are girls in ballet dress, with a man in Spanish-style costume to the left. In the foreground, a dancer makes a curtsy, her right arm down with hand turned palm up, her left hand holding a floral wreath; he head is slightly inclined to her left and she looks out towards the viewer. The very low off-the-shoulder brown bodice has brief sleeves, the sleeves and neck edged with lace with a pink rose centre front; the bodice is laced down the centre front with pink ribbons finishing in a bow. From the back of her severely dressed hair stream long pink ribbons. Over her two tier diaphanous skirt is a white apron, trimmed, like the hems, with palest pink ribbon. On her feet are white ballet slippers tied with ribbons. On the floor in front of the dancer are strewn floral wreaths and posies. The print area is cut across upper corners.

Given by Dame Marie Rambert

Fanny Cerrito danced Le Toréador during her first London season in 1840. It was described by one critic as ‘a very commonplace and ineffective tale of Spanish intrigue and jealousy, a mere pretext for connecting together a number of dances, without involving a single idea to which dancing can give expression.’ But Cerrito had a personal triumph, especially in La Castellana, a Spanish dance which drove the audience to wild enthusiasm; they called for an encore, but, in a gesture recorded in this print, she curtsied a decline.
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.

Fanny Cerrito (facsimile signature) / IN THE BALLET / LE TORREADOR (sic)

Fanny Cerrito danced Le Toréador during her first London season in 1840. It was described by one critic as 'a very commonplace and ineffective tale of Spanish intrigue and jealousy, a mere pretext for connecting together a number of dances, without involving a single idea to which dancing can give expression.' But Cerrito had a personal triumph, especially in La Castellana, a Spanish dance which drove the audience to wild enthusiasm; they called for an encore, but she curtsied a decline. The print probably combines this moment with the curtain calls when 'there was such a tremendous storm of garlands … and bouquets,' that the stage resembled a flower show. After acknowledging the ovation, 'the pretty danseuse gratefully bowed her thanks to the audience, and tripped off with as many garlands and bouquets as she could carry.' Presumably the shadowy male figure in the background is her partner and choreographer of the ballet, Antonio Guerra.

E.4990-1968