Carlotta Grisi as Giselle in Act II of Jules Perrot's ballet Giselle. Hand coloured lithograph after Bouvier, 1842

Female dancer in a Romantic Ballet dress, low necked with short fitted sleeves and fitted bodice tinted palest pink; the two-tier skirt is caught with posies of flowers tinted green and pink; from the back are 'butterfly' wings and on her head floral headdress tinted palest pink, set with a central star. The figure is floating diagonally towards the left, above a dark-toned landscape of lake, trees and mountains, the horizon flushed pink indicating dawn; in the left hand corner, a cross draped with a stole incsribed 'Giselle', the base covered with flowers and foliage and, in the right hand corner, spikes of flowers tinted pinks and blues. Coloured lithograph with arched upper edge. Titled below the image: "Carlotta Grisi (facsimile signature?) in the popular ballet of Giselle ou, Les Wilis." and with artist, publisher and printer.

Cyril W. Beaumont Bequest

The print depicts Carlotta Grisi as Giselle the Wili in the second act of Jules Perrot's ballet Giselle, which she created at the Paris Opera in 1841 and danced in London in 1842. As the sky is flushed pink, the print may represent the dawn, when the wilis return to their graves. Grisi's performance of Giselle in the second act was her supreme interpretation and she sometimes appeared in this act alone. Reviews of the ballet describe how Giselle appeared to Albrecht 'now suspended in the air', which could indicate the use of flying sequences, although these could have been executed by a double, given that the ballerina is unlikely to have worn a flying harness throughout the act.
The inscription on the reverse of the print, which may have been made by the original framer, links the print to Deryck Lynham, the dance researcher and historian and may have been given by him, or his widow, to the London Archives of the Dance. The Archives never achieved an independent home and part of the collection was stored with Cyril Beaumont, where it became inextricably mixed with his own collection and came to the Museum as part of the Cyril Beaumont Bequest.

S.133-1992