Lucile Grahn. (Sketches at the Ballet). Lithograph coloured by hand, 1840s.

In a rocky landscape, a dancer stands on point, her other leg raised and pointed to the back. Her body is in profile to the right of the print, her arms are raised to shoulder height and her head turned to look at the viewer. She wears a blue off-the shoulder dress with a band across the upper arm, and a bell-shaped skirt with a band decorated with roses around the hem. In her hands is a diaphanous stole which wafts out around her body. On her feet are pink ballet slippers tied with ribbons.

Given by Dame Marie Rambert

Lucile Grahn was the first Danish ballerina to establish an international reputation in the 1840s.
The print is part of a series, Sketches at the Ballet; it is not known how many prints were in the series. It is not listed by George Chaffee in his Dance Index monograph, The Romantic Ballet in London.
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 over 130 items, 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. Although it is often referred to as the Rambert-Dukes collection of Romantic Ballet prints, it includes 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.

Lucile Grahn was the first Danish ballerina to establish an international reputation in the 1840s. After she retired from performing, she choreographed the ballets in Wagner's operas.
She is dancing on pointe (on the tips of her toes). There are prints dating from the 1820s showing dancers posed on pointe, when it was little more than an acrobatic trick. By the early 1830s it was an essential part of the ballerina's technique and choreographers were using it expressively to suggest character and mood. The shoes gave little support, the only stiffening being a little darning at the back of the toes; the modern pointe shoe, with its flat, blocked toe, did not develop until much later in the 19th century

E.5016-1968