Marie Taglioni in La Gitana. Lithograph coloured by hand by Weld Taylor after a painting by Edwin D Smith, 1840.

The dancer stands with feet together, facing to her left, the body turning so that she looks out at the viewer; her right arm is by her side, her left arm is bent with the hand behind her back. On her head she wears a soft cap with a tassel; over the white blouse is a blue bodice, laced down the front, with short sleeves ending in a white frill and lappets into the skirt. The white skirt is knee-length and her ballet slippers are black.

Given by Dame Marie Rambert

La Gitana was originally choreographed by Filippo Taglioni for his daughter Marie and danced by her at the Bolshoi in St Petersburg in 1838; it was revived with dances by Antonio Guerra at Her Majesty's Theatre in London in 1839.
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.

The great 19th century ballerina Marie Taglioni was famous for her ethereal roles, like the Sylph in La Sylphide, but she just as capable of playing human characters and performing in other dance styles. In 1838 she appeared in La Gitana (The Gipsy), a typical Romantic ballet story of a child stolen from her aristocratic parents and brought up as a gipsy before being restored to her family.
By this time a recognisable 'ballet' costume had evolved - a low-cut pointed bodice, or a little blouse worn under a laced bodice, and a bell-shaped, knee-length skirt formed of tiers of tarlatan with a diaphanous top layer. To this were added various details indicating indicate the character, status or nationality of the particular role.

E.5059-1968