Fanny Cerrito in La Fille de marbre. Lithograph coloured by hand by A Lacauchie. (Galérie Dramatique, No. 381), ca. 1847

A female dancer stands on her right leg with left pointed to front, her body half turned to her right. Her head is inclined and her right arm is on her waist, her left outstretched and holding a red and white beribboned tambourine. Her hair is severely dressed with two very long plaits to the back. Over a short-sleeved white blouse she wears a fitted bodice edged in yellow and decorated with a scroll pattern in red and yellow; the bodice fastens across the front with lacing. Around the waist is knotted a long, broad white scarf with yellow stripes and fringe. The knee-length white skirt has two bands of blue around the hem and a blue overskirt, split either side almost to the waist.
Signed on the stone "A Lacauchie"

Given by Dame Marie Rambert

The print shows the ballerina Fanny Cerrito as Fatma in Arthur Saint-Léon's ballet La Fille de marbre. Produced in 1847, it was a reworking of André Deshayes and Jules Perrot's ballet Alma, in which Cerrito had appeared in London in 1842.
The print is on of the series Galerie Dramatique, a gallery of theatrical personalities appearing on the French stage. Beginning publication in 1796, issuing one print every ten days, it continued, with only a break during the Franco-Prussian War, until the 1880s, by which time it had published some 3000 plates. All the plates were drawn from life after the opening of a new production, and so record many short-lived works, as well as some that are still performed today.
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.

Signed by A Lacauchie

The marble maiden of the title of this ballet is Fatma, a statue sculpted by Manasses. He falls in love with her and sells his soul so that she can be brought to life, but the condition is that she will never be able to love. The tambourine featured in in the Spanish scene, where Cerrito, as Fatma, charms the crowds with her dancing, the beat of the tambourine becoming increasingly insistent as her movements become more and more impassioned.
One critic described the ballet as ‘this strange faery, this incoherent dream, this hurly-burly of genii, demons, salamanders, Turks, Moors, Spaniards, penitents and arquebusiers.’ In other words, the plot was a complex farrago, designed to feature as many dancers as possible while indulging the audience’s love of spectacular scenery by moving the action through as many different countries as possible.
By 1847, a recognisable 'ballet' costume had evolved - a low-cut pointed bodice, or a little blouse worn under a laced bodice, and a bell-shaped, knee-length skirt formed of tiers of tarlatan with a diaphanous top layer. To this were added various details indicating indicate the character, status or nationality of the particular role.

E.4994-1968