Lydia Thompson in the Jockey Dance. Lithograph coloured by hand, mid 19th century

Dancer standing on her toes on her left leg, her right crossed behind at knee-height, her body facing the viewer and her head turned to look out to her right. Her arms are held out and bent and in her right hand she holds a riding whip. On her ringletted hair she wears a yellow jockey cap. Her tight-fitting, yellow jacket has a shawl collar, which curves out to reveal a white blouse before fastening under the bust; the jacket fronts and collar are trimmed with buttons and at the neck is a broad pale blue bow. The bell-shaped blue tinted skirt is in two tiers and reaches to above the knee. On her feet are fitted pale blue ankle boots trimmed in yellow.

Given by Dame Marie Rambert

Lydia Thompson was a hugely popular burlesque actress and dancer in the second half of the 19th century in Europe and America. In Germany and Russia students unharnessed her horses and pulled her carriage through the streets.
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.

Lydia Thompson was a hugely popular burlesque actress and dancer in the second half of the 19th century in Europe and America. In Germany and Russia students unharnessed her horses and pulled her carriage through the streets.
In 1868 she went to America where, backed by her scantily clad, buxom-thighed chorus of 'British Blondes' (some of whom were neither), her sexy but never coarse performances earned her the title 'Queen of Burlesque'. Public interest was fuelled by stories about a 'lesbian attacker' and of Lydia's public horsewhipping of the proprietor of the Chicago Times, who had published an article doubting her girls' virtue.
In England, burlesque was mostly a take-off or satire on contemporary themes, but in America, partly due to Lydia, it acquired a slightly more scandalous reputation, eventually becoming little more than a girlie show or strip tease.

E.5062-1968