Carlotta Grisi in Act II of Giselle. Tinted lithograph coloured by hand by J Brandard, 1840s.

In a moonlit setting, a mountainous landscape, with a lake with castle on the far bank; to the left a draped cross inscribed 'Giselle' and to the right roses on a trellis. In the centre a dancer stands in profile on her left point, her right leg raised to the back, her arms raised at shoulder level. Her head is turned to the front and her eyes look down over her right shoulder. Her off-the-shoulder bodice is held by straps on the upper arms; From the back are fixed wings decorated with peacock feathers. Around her waist is a decorative belt. The knee-length diaphanous skirt is made up of three tiers, the top layer shorter and split from hem to waist, held across with posies of white flowers; a similar posy decorates the bodice at centre front.
Lithograph with cut corners

Lady Mary Evans Bequest

Giselle the most famous ballet of the Romantic ballet, was devised by the French writer, Théophile Gautier, for Carlotta Grisi, whom he admired inordinately, likening her to ‘a tea-rose about to bloom.’ She first danced the ballet in Paris in 1841 and in London in 1842.
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.

Giselle the most famous ballet of the Romantic ballet, was devised by the French writer, Théophile Gautier, for Carlotta Grisi, whom he admired inordinately, likening her to 'a tea-rose about to bloom.' Her freshness and youthfulness were ideal for the role of the innocent peasant who kills herself on discovering that her admirer is an aristocrat and betrothed to another. The print shows her in Act II, when, in death, she is summoned to join the Wilis, girls betrayed by their lovers who die before their wedding, and who seek to revenge themselves upon men. Giselle's love transcends hate and she saves her repentant lover from the vengeful spirits.
In Giselle, Gautier encapsulated the two aspects of the Romantic ballet, the human girl and the unattainable spirit. Unattainable spirits were very popular in the Romantic era, the ultimate putting of a woman on a pedestal.

S.2607-1986