Fanny Elssler in La Tarentule. Lithograph coloured by hand after a drawing by J Bouvier, 1840.

A mountainous landscape; to the right a ruined Greek temple on a crag, below which is a rustic mill. In the centre a dancer turns 'upstage', standing on the ball of her left foot with her right foot pointed behind; her arms are curved beside her head, and she holds castanets; she looks back at the viewer over her left shoulder. On her severely dressed hair is a headband of roses and leaves. She wears a low-necked white blouse with puffed sleeves edged with a lace flounce over which is a green bodice with brown shoulder straps decorated with matching ribbon loops; the bell-shaped white skirt falls to below the knee. On the ground are flower sprays.

Given by Dame Marie Rambert

The print shows Fanny Elssler in Jean Coralli's ballet La Tarentule (The Tarantula), which was first performed at the Paris Opera in 1839. The lithograph commemorates her London performances in London in 1840.
According to superstition, the bite of the tarantula in the region of Taranto, in Southern Italy, brought on a type of delirium tremens, the cure for which was an energetic dance - known as the tarantella.
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 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.
Before the development of colour printing, the basic black and white prints were hand coloured. There is often considerable variation from one print to another, both in colour and quality of the work. The most important souvenir prints, such as this one, would only have been sent out to the best colourists, and it is often very difficult to tell the best hand colouring from early colour printing. In the days before photography, such lithographs were expensive souvenirs, bought by the individual dancer's admirers.

Tarantulas were very common spiders around Taranto in Southern Italy. According to superstition, their bite brought on a type of delirium tremens, the cure for which was an energetic dance - the tarantella. In the ballet La Tarentule, the tarantella was danced not by the victim, but by his fiancée, danced by Fanny Elssler, and was planned as the highlight of her performance. It was a tour de force of contrasts, ethereal yet vigorous, tempering 'the very southern fire' of the tarantella with reserve and modesty. In her hands Elssler holds castanets, which are usually associated with Spain, but were also a traditional accompaniment to the tarentella.
The flower sprays on the floor represent tributes thrown by the dancer's admirers.

E.5002-1968