The polka on 19th-century music covers

What you are looking at

A hand-colored engraving showing three figures in Central European folk dress, evidently demonstrating or dancing the polka. A man in dark trousers and a red-trimmed vest stands at the center-left, his body angled in profile, one arm extended toward a woman in a full skirt of pale green over white underskirt. She faces him in an engaged posture. To the right, a smaller girl in a burgundy dress watches or waits her turn. The figures are set against a plain cream background, rendered without architectural detail or landscape—the emphasis is entirely on the bodies and their dress. The hand-coloring is restrained and precise: the reds, greens, and flesh tones are applied with care but without atmospheric depth, typical of the colored prints of the period. The composition is frontal and staged, as though the artist were documenting a living example of the dance for instruction or publication.

The dancing

The man's posture is upright and alert, his weight forward and his right arm extended as though leading or inviting. The woman faces him with an open, engaged stance; her arms are at her sides or lightly held, her weight appears mobile rather than committed to a single position. The smaller girl stands apart, her body relaxed but attentive. The spatial relationships suggest instruction or demonstration—this is not a snapshot of social dancing but a posed showing of how the figures relate and move together.

The dance depicted

The title declares this to be a polka—specifically the Camelia, Alpenhorn, and Teufels variants. The polka was a Central European social dance, Czech in origin, that swept across Europe and North America from the 1840s onward and became a standard of ballrooms and public balls. The image documents how the polka was held and performed: the man and woman in an open or semi-closed frame, their bodies articulate and ready for the characteristic quick, syncopated step-hop rhythm that defined the dance. The inclusion of three figures—and the subtitle's reference to variants—suggests this is a teaching image, meant to show the basic position and the progression that dancers learned.

How it was made

This is a hand-colored engraving or lithograph, established from the crisp line work, the graphic quality of the figures, and the restrained palette. The technique allowed for mechanical reproduction: a base image could be printed in quantity and then colored by hand in workshops, making this an affordable and widely distributed educational tool. The neatness and clarity of the line work, and the absence of heavy shading, point to a commercial rather than fine-art production. Objects of this kind served the rapidly expanding dance-instruction and ballroom-culture market of the mid-nineteenth century.

About this work

This is a mid-nineteenth-century commercial print documenting the polka at the height of its European and transatlantic popularity. It served as a teaching aid—one of many such prints published for ballroom dancers, dance masters, and the expanding middle-class leisure culture. The print is part of a larger wave of dance instruction materials that emerged as social dancing became a codified accomplishment and a social necessity. Prints like this one, often bound into instruction manuals or sold separately, were how dancers encountered and learned the conventions of fashionable steps before the age of photography and film. The work belongs in a dance archive both as evidence of a specific historical moment and as an artifact of how knowledge of dance was transmitted and standardized.

How to look at it

Attend to the hold and frame: the man's arm extended, the woman's open readiness, the lateral spacing that allows for the quick, hopping step that defines the polka. Notice the dress—the man's trim vest and the woman's full skirt—both of which would have been essential to the movement: the skirt giving amplitude to the turn, the vest keeping the man's upper body mobile and visible. The print is a static image, but it shows the moment of connection and readiness before or during the dance, not a moment of rest. The three figures arranged at different scales and depths suggest a sequence of instruction: the primary pair demonstrate the hold, the girl waits to learn.

The artist

The artist is not recorded. The print is attributed to Ferdinand Beyer, a prolific composer and arranger of dance music for the ballroom and concert hall, active in the nineteenth century. Beyer published numerous polka arrangements and instruction materials; it is likely that Beyer provided the musical side of this pedagogical project and collaborated with an unnamed engraver or lithographer to create the visual documentation. This was common practice in the ballroom-instruction trade: the musician or dance master would lend their name and authority while the actual visual work was carried out by commercial print workshops.

The period

The polka emerged in Bohemia in the 1830s and became a continental sensation by the 1840s. It represented a democratic, energetic alternative to the formal and remote minuet or the stately waltz: it was faster, more rhythmically playful, and more accessible to ordinary middle-class dancers. By the time this print was made (the record does not specify the date, but the style and dress suggest the 1860s–1880s), the polka had become a standard fixture of ballrooms across Europe and North America, taught in dancing academies and performed at public balls. The period saw an explosion of commercial dance-instruction materials—prints, choreographies, musical scores—that served the massive growth of social dancing as a leisure activity and a marker of respectability and accomplishment.

Where it lives

The print is held in the New York Public Library's collection of dance prints. It is part of a broader commercial output of dance-instruction graphics, lithographs, and engravings that were produced in large numbers for the European and American ballroom market in the nineteenth century. This particular print was published by J. L. Girlod (New York), Oliver Ditson (Boston), and other firms, indicating that it was widely distributed and available to middle-class dancers and dance teachers.

Dance in this work

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