Adèle Dumilâtre in L'aurore. Etching and stipple engraving coloured by hand by H S Ball after a painting by Edwin D Smith, 1843.

A girl reclines on a cloud floating over a hilly landscape; she leans on her left arm, looking out to her right. Her hair is severely dressed and crowned with a circlet of yellow roses. She wears a short-sleeved, off the shoulder pink dress; the pointed bodice is edged at the neck and down the front with darker pink ribbons and mid breast are two yellow roses. Around the waist is a 'gold' belt, following the line of the point. The diaphanous skirt reaches to below the knee. On her feet are pink ballet slippers. Below the cloud is a hilly landscape with trees. The upper edge of the print is domed.

Given by Dame Marie Rambert

Adèle Dumilâtre appeared in the divertissement L’Aurore, during her debut season in London in 1843.
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.

Aurora was the goddess of the dawn who rose into the sky each morning in a golden chariot drawn by winged horses, her rosy brilliance scattering the night. Ballerina Adèle Dumilâtre appeared in the divertissement L'Aurore, during her debut season in London in 1843. (A divertissement, literally a 'diversion', consists of solos or group dances with no plot.)
Many ballets in the mid-19th century centered on spirits of the air and stage machinery was used to make the ballerinas fly through the air, disappear or, as here, move them on clouds - anything to increase the illusion of lightness and flight. Dancers had always worked to defy gravity in their jumps and spins, but now the new technique of dancing on the tips of the toes increased the sense of ethereality and otherworldliness. Dumilâtre wears what we now recognize as ballet shoes. These developed from the heelless satin slippers, held by crossed ribbons, which were the height of fashion in the early 19th century. Darned to give extra support, and then stiffened by various techniques and with a solid base across the toes, they developed into the modern pointe shoe.

E.4996-1968