Marie Taglioni in La Bayadère. Lithograph coloured by hand by R J Lane after a drawing by A E Chalon, ca. 1830.

Against a blue, cloudy ground, a dancer stands on pointe, her body facing to her right, her head turned to her right; her right arm is bent out from the body and holds one end of a stole, which billows around her back and is held by her left arm which is behind her back. On her severely dressed hair is a central square ornament around which is a double pearl headdress with drop pearls; from her ears hang elaborate pendant earrings finished in trop pearls. Around her neck are two long pearl necklaces and a longer string with pearls interspersed with drop pearls. Her white diaphanous dress has a 'gold' spotted bodice with a low scoop neck and short sleeves, the right trimmed with pearls, the left with an elaborate bracelet formed of rosettes. Around her waist is a wide belt set with decorated roundels. Over her right shoulder, passing under the belt and extending into the skirt, is a wide diaphanous band decorated with grey flowers and foliage; the skirt is made of a similar fabric, the impression being that it is one length of fabric wrapped around the body. On her feet are white ballet slippers with crossed ribbons.

Given by Dame Marie Rambert

This print of Marie Taglioni, the greatest ballerina of the 19th century, was said to be her favourite image of herself. It shows her as Zoloe in André Deshayes ballet La Bayadère, in London in 1831. The ballet included her solo from Le Dieu et la bayadère (The God and the bayadère).
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.

Taglioni stands on the tips of her toes, en pointe. The technique had developed in the 1820s, but Taglioni was the first ballet dancer to develop dancing on pointe as an expression of character, not a mere technical trick.
All the elements of the costume - the drop pearl headdress worn low over the forehead, the drop earrings, short-sleeved bodice, the diagonally placed scarf and the tiered skirt - are reminiscent of elements of authentic Indian dress, but have been simplified into a stylized stage costume which audiences recognised as 'Indian'. The dance style, however, is strictly balletic. Dancing on the tips of the toes is no part of Indian dance technique.
This print was said to be Taglioni's favourite image of herself.

E.5046-1968