Marie Guy-Stéphan dancing Las Boleras de Cadiz. Lithograph coloured by hand by J H Lynch after a drawing by C G Lynch, 1844.

Female dancer standing on a terrace beyond which are Italinate buildings. She is facing left, head in profile, her right arm curved above her head, her left arm down; in her hands she holds; she stands on her right turned out leg and with her left extended to the front with pointed foot. Her hair is severely dressed, and is pulled back into a bun surrounded by a pink frill at the back. Her black bodice joins straight onto the short sleeves, is cut very low at the front and continues into a point at centre front; down the centre front is a pink strip and the neckline and sleeves are trimmed with black lace. Her knee-length, bell-shaped pale pink skirt is trimmed above the hem with a deep flounce of black lace. On her feet she wears black ballet slippers with no ribbons. The print area is cut across on the corners.

Given by Dame Marie Rambert

Marie Guy-Stéphan was born in France in 1818 and danced in Paris and London where she was famous particularly for her Spanish dances. She later became prima ballerina in Madrid. S.2624-1986 is another copy of the print with similar colouring.
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.

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.

National dances and settings were popular in the 1840s as audiences became increasingly aware of 'abroad' and exotic locations. Scotland, Spain, Hungary, Poland and the Balkans were all popular settings and some ballets were set as far afield as India, giving the opportunity for balleticized versions of national dances, like the Cachucha, mazurka, polka, polonaise, tarentella or Cracovienne.
The Cachucha is a stylized Spanish dance, originally from Cuba, popularised by Fanny Elssler in Jean Coralli's 1836 ballet Le Diable Boîteaux (The Lame Devil). The dance covers a range of movements, sometimes gracefully calm, sometimes sprightly and sometimes impassioned hip swinging, making great use of the castanets.
Marie Guy-Stéphan was born in France in 1818 and danced in Paris and London where she was famous particularly for her Spanish dances. She later became prima ballerina in Madrid.

E.5025-1968