Louise Fleury in La Jolie fille de Gand. Lithograph coloured by hand by R J Lane after a drawing by A E Chalon, 1844.

A young woman stands with her body turned half to her left, her arms curving to her left, her head turned to look across her right shoulder. Her hair is severely dressed, with a flower decoration to the back. She wears a white off-the-shoulder crinoline ball dress, with a pointed bodice trimmed over the neck and upper arms with lace and with a posy of flowers centre front; the bell-shaped skirt has a shorter overskirt of a diaphanous fabric, slit over the legs, and decorated at the top of the slit with posies of flowers. Her right shoe is visible under the skirt.

Given by Dame Marie Rambert

The lithograph shows Louise Fleury in Albert's ballet La Jolie fille du Gand (The Beauty of Ghent). Fleury appeared twice in a ball dress, once after she has become mistress to the sinister Marquis, and then at a ball.
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.

Historical significance: The print shows how close ballet costume was to mid 19th century fashionable dress. Dance dresses were lighter and shorter, but in low necklines, fitted, pointed bodice and bell-shaped skirt, they mirrored contemporary fashion.

The word 'Proof'printed on the lithograph does not indicate a test copy made for revisions. Because lithography allowed such large runs of a print, it was argued that they were of no worth as an art-print, unlike engravings, which had much smaller print runs. Printing early pulls in a run with 'Proof' was a way of making them more attactive to print collectors, although they have no extra merit over any other pull in the run.
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.

Attribution note: The word 'Proof'printed on the lithograph does not indicate a test copy made for revisions. Because lithography allowed such large runs of a print, it was argued that they were of no worth as an art-print, unlike engravings, which had much smaller print runs. Printing early pulls in a run with 'Proof' was a way of making them more attactive to print collectors, although they have no extra merit over any other pull in the run.

The print is unusual in showing a dancer of the 1840s in a fashionable dress rather than a ballet costume. This was not unusual when dancers were appearing in scenes that were mainly mime, but they were rarely recorded, artists preferring to show the dancers in ballet costume. In La Jolie fille du Gand (The Beauty of Ghent), Fleury appeared twice in a ball dress, once after she has become mistress to the sinister Marquis, and then at a ball. However, no dancer could be expected to mime all the evening, and at the ball Beatrix soon shed her gown to reappear as the goddess Diana, and perform a stunning solo.
The print shows how close ballet costume was to mid 19th century fashionable dress. Dance dresses were lighter and shorter, but in low necklines, fitted, pointed bodice and bell-shaped skirt, they mirrored contemporary fashion.

E.5010-1968