Polnischer Tanz (Polish Dance). Lithograph with some hand colouring, mid 19th century

A line of couples dance across a village landscape. The girls wear 'halo' headdresses trimmed with flowers, high-necked and full-sleeved blouses, laced bodices with peplums, some coloured blue, and knee-length light skirts banded in red. The men wear red square caps, white shirts, dark blue cross-over skirted jackets trimmed in yellow, and with orange shoulder-capes; their white breeches are ticked into knee-length boots; the central male figure has elaborate yellow decorations on the jacket skirt with a loop of interlocking discs from the belt. On the right are two musicians, one playing the violin, the other bagpipes made from a goat; in front, sitting on a barrel, is an old man wearing a green square hat, blue coat and striped breeches accepting a drink from a figure wearing a square cap, long blue coat with shoulder cape and yellow belt with loop of interlocking discs on the hip.

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 girls in this print wear conventional 19th century ballet dress and only their halo headdresses and long bodices hint that they are from Eastern Europe. The men's flat, square caps and cross-over skirted jackets with shoulder-capes, are more typical of Polish national dress.

Published F Sala & Co Unter o Linden 57

The girls in this print wear conventional 19th century ballet dress and only their halo headdresses and long bodices hint that they are from Eastern Europe. The men's flat, square caps and cross-over skirted jackets with shoulder-capes, are more typical of Polish national dress.
Bagpipes, especially in Eastern European and the Mediterranean, are often made of goatskin and chanter stocks are sometimes carved with goat heads. Here the musician appears to be blowing into a bagpipe with an actual goat head, which must be musically interesting. impossible. The artist probably never saw original Polish bagpipes and misunderstood about the goat's head, and drew a real head onto the goatskin bag instead of a carved one.

E.5081-1968