The polka on 19th-century music covers

What you are looking at

This is the cover sheet of a French music publication for piano, featuring an illustration of a spirited Polka Flamande. Two figures dominate the composition: a man in dark military or formal dress with a high collar and a woman in a full-skirted dress with horizontal pleating, captured mid-movement in an energetic leap or bound. The woman's skirts billow dramatically as she rises, her body angled upward and away from her partner. The man, positioned slightly behind and to the side, reaches upward with one arm extended toward the woman's raised hand in a gesture of support or celebration. Both figures are depicted with their feet off the ground, frozen in a moment of exuberant elevation. The background is plain, focusing all attention on the dancers. The illustration is executed in black and white line work with careful attention to the fabric texture of the woman's dress and the detail of period costume.

The dancing

Both dancers are airborne, their bodies dynamically asymmetrical. The woman's weight rises through the leap, her arms extended and her full skirts creating a visual apex. The man, in supporting position, reaches upward with engaged posture, his body angled to follow his partner's trajectory. This is not a closed-position dance—the partners relate through extended arms and spatial connection rather than contact. The composition emphasizes vertical lift and explosive movement energy, with the man's supportive gesture subordinate to the woman's dominant, skyward direction.

The dance depicted

This is a Polka Flamande (Flamenco Polka), a hybrid social dance that combined the rhythmic patterns and character of Andalusian flamenco with the bouncing, accentuated steps of the European polka. The Polka Flamande was fashionable in French ballrooms and salons during the mid-to-late 19th century. The image captures the characteristic explosive energy of the form—the upward spring and lift that distinguishes polka from other social dances. The woman's aerial position and the man's upward-reaching support gesture are both consistent with how the Polka Flamande emphasized vertical bounce and dramatic, celebratory partnering.

How it was made

This is a chromolithograph or engraved illustration, printed as the cover sheet of a published music score. The publisher, Brandus & Cie of Paris, issued dance music for amateur pianists and ballroom players—this was popular domestic music for middle-class consumption. The printed sheet was both advertisement and functional object, enabling dancers to take home the published score and music instruction. The technique allowed for clean, reproducible imagery that could be mass-printed and distributed, making the dance accessible to the widest possible audience of musicians and dancers in France and abroad.

About this work

This is a published piano score cover for a Polka Flamande, a 19th-century French social dance that fused Spanish flamenco character with the mechanical bounce of the polka. The illustration captures the dance in a moment of explosive elevation—both dancers airborne, the woman dominant and skyward, the man supporting from below. As a printed sheet-music cover from Brandus & Cie, it documents both a specific dance form and the commercial circulation of dance instruction through the music publishing industry. The work belongs in a gallery of dance imagery because it records how a fashionable social dance was marketed, consumed, and performed by the educated middle class during the Second Empire and Belle Époque.

How to look at it

Attend to the moment of suspension: both dancers are caught at the peak of their jump, their bodies weightless. The artist has chosen the apex rather than the preparation or landing, emphasizing the explosive, springing quality that defines the polka. Notice how the woman's skirts billow and rise—the illustrator used fabric volume and movement to suggest the speed and lift of the dance. The man's upward-reaching gesture, though subordinate in visual weight, anchors the composition and establishes this as a partnered social dance rather than a solo turn. The blank background isolates the dancers, making their energy and mutual attention the sole subject.

The artist

The artist is not identified in the catalogue record, but the engraved or lithographed illustration is signed with initials that are not fully legible in reproduction. The work was produced by Brandus & Cie, a major Parisian music publisher based on the Rue Richelière, active throughout the 19th century. Brandus published dance music, operatic scores, and popular songs for both professional musicians and amateur home performers. Sheet-music covers by minor or unnamed artists were common in this industry; the publisher's name and the composition's title were often more important to marketing than the illustrator's identity.

The period

The Polka Flamande emerged in France during the 1840s–1860s, in the context of the craze for social dances that mixed national or regional characteristics. The polka itself had arrived in Paris from Prague and Vienna in the 1840s and spread rapidly through European ballrooms. Simultaneously, there was a sustained French fascination with Spanish culture, music, and flamenco, fed by Romantic-era poetry and visual arts. The Polka Flamande was an attempt to synthesize these two enthusiasms. In visual culture, this period saw dance covers become increasingly important to music-publishing marketing; the dramatic, dynamic illustrations were designed to attract buyers and suggest the energy and pleasure of the dance itself. This cover, with its emphasis on upward spring and partnered exuberance, reflects the values of a society increasingly confident in physical display and social dancing as expressions of modernity.

Where it lives

This object is held in the New York Public Library's collection of prints depicting dance. It is a published sheet-music cover from Brandus & Cie, a Parisian music publisher, and belongs to the category of commercial dance documentation—objects that were mass-produced and circulated for practical domestic use rather than as fine-art prints.

Dance in this work

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