The Pet of the Ballet, No. 5. Lithograph coloured by hand by R Gallon, 1843

A dancer stands facing the viewer, her hands clasped in front, her head turned in profile to the right. Her hair is looped at the front and plaited into a coil at the back; on her head she wears a white floral wreath. Her off-the-shoulder white blouse falls into wide short sleeves edged with white; over the shoulders to the waist are black bands, laced across the front under the bust, and hanging down into the skirt, finishing in a white 'fringe'; the bands are held around the waist by a white belt, finishing in a point at centre front. Her white skirt is edged in white and overlaid to either side of the black bands, with blue and pink white 'fringed' bands. Above a tiny toe-cap, her feet are bound with blue ribbons, simulating shoes.

Given by Dame Marie Rambert

This print is one of a series showing anyonymous dancers; they are slightly comic in style, and more realistic than most 19th century ballet prints. They celebrate those unnamed dancers who pose and wait, known only from programmes as 'peris', 'nymphs', 'sylphs', 'gipsies', 'townspeople' etc., who provided a decorative background for the great ballerinas and filled in between her appearances. There were eight prints in the series, published by Rudolph Ackermann, of which the Rambert-Dukes collection has four - Nos 2, 3, 4 and 5.
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.

Lithographer credited as R Galllon
Day & Haghe, Lith. To the Queen

This print is one of a series of eight showing anyonymous dancers; they are slightly comic in style, and more realistic than most 19th century ballet prints which idealised the subjects. They celebrate those unnamed dancers who pose and wait, known only from programmes as 'peris', 'nymphs', 'sylphs', 'gipsies', 'townspeople' etc., who provided a decorative background for the great ballerinas and filled in between her appearances. In Russia, such dancers were called 'les danseuses près de l'eau'(dancers near the water), as they stood against the backcloth on which a fountain was often painted; in Paris they were nicknamed 'les petits rats' (the little rats) because they looked half-starved and were always nibbling something. The English title may come from an 'operatic choreographic burlesque Sketch' called 'The Pet of the Ballet', produced in London in the 1840s.

E.5076-1968