Le diable à quatre, ballet d'Ad. Adam, polka arrangée pour le piano par Henri Rosellen

What you are looking at

This is a lithographic cover page for a piano arrangement of a polka from Adolphe Adam's ballet *Le Diable à Quatre*. Two dancers are depicted in a moment of social dance, positioned dynamically across the composition. On the left stands a woman in a white peasant dress with a decorative blue-and-red embroidered panel across the front, short puffed sleeves, and red ankle boots; she holds a small basket or bundle in one hand and turns toward her partner. On the right is a man in a striking red tunic with blue-and-white striped tights, a plumed hat, and boots, striking a characteristic pose with one arm akimbo and the other extended. Both figures are rendered in a romanticized style typical of mid-nineteenth-century theatrical prints, with careful attention to the vivid costumes and the moment of social interaction. The ornamental border frames the composition in the classical style of Victorian theatrical ephemera, and the typography emphasizes the ballet's title and the arranger's name.

The dancing

The woman adopts a balletic posture with her body slightly inclined toward her partner, one leg bent in a suggestive step or pivot, her upper body graceful and controlled. The man strikes a theatrical pose characteristic of male dancers of the Romantic era—chest forward, weight on one leg, the free leg extended or lifted, suggesting both nobility and playfulness. Their spatial relationship suggests active courtship or flirtation; they are turned toward one another despite being separated across the composition. The costumes and bearing indicate trained theatrical dancers rather than folk performers, despite the rustic dress.

The dance depicted

*Le Diable à Quatre* was a popular French ballet-pantomime choreographed to Adolphe Adam's score, first performed in 1845. This print documents the survival of that work in domestic music-making through piano arrangements by professional musicians like Henri Rosellen, who made operatic and ballet scores accessible to middle-class households. The polka designation suggests that the arrangement captured or adapted a section of the ballet for the enormously popular polka craze of the 1840s–1850s. The peasant and demon-or-devil-character costumes indicate a scene from the ballet's plot involving the supernatural or carnivalesque elements common to mid-century ballet-pantomime. While this is not a representation of ballet technique per se, it documents how theatrical dance entered popular culture through printed music and how romantic and comic ballet subjects were merchandised.

How it was made

This is a color lithograph, a process that allowed rapid printing and affordable distribution of theatrical imagery. The hand-coloring in red, blue, and flesh tones over the lithographic base creates a rich, appealing image suitable for display or as a cover for sheet music. Lithography's capacity to render fluid lines and subtle gradation makes it ideal for capturing the movement and costume detail that would attract purchasers of theatrical music. The print's condition—aged paper with visible foxing—indicates long circulation and actual use as sheet-music cover rather than as a formal art object.

About this work

This is a theatrical print advertising a piano arrangement of music from *Le Diable à Quatre*, a mid-nineteenth-century French ballet. It captures a moment of social dance between two characters, presenting them as idealized romantic and comic figures in costume. The work is typical of how ballet and theatrical spectacle were commercialized through printed music in the nineteenth century, creating an intermediary form between the staged dance and domestic consumption. The lithograph's vivid costumes and theatrical poses document both the visual language of mid-century ballet and the market for theatrical imagery in an era before photograph-based promotion.

How to look at it

Notice the careful rendering of the costumes: the woman's embroidered folk dress and the man's flamboyant tunic and striped tights are historically specific markers of character and social class within the ballet's narrative. The artist has chosen a moment of energetic greeting or flirtation, with both figures caught in dynamic poses rather than in a formal ballroom frame. The lithographic process allows the eye to follow the flowing lines of their silhouettes and the bright accents of color that would have caught attention in a sheet-music display. The theatrical poses and idealized proportions are characteristic of how dance was presented to the non-theater audience—as spectacle and narrative rather than as technical demonstration.

The artist

Henri Rosellen (1811–1876) was a French pianist and composer who specialized in arrangements and reductions of operatic and ballet scores for domestic use. He was prolific in making fashionable theatrical works accessible to the Victorian drawing room, and his name on sheet-music covers was a mark of professional musicianship and reliability. While the lithographer of this cover is not recorded, such theatrical prints were produced by commercial music publishers in Paris and London, often by teams of artists specializing in this genre.

The period

The 1840s–1850s saw the height of the polka as a social dance phenomenon across Europe and North America, and composers and arrangers rapidly adapted operatic and ballet melodies to polka rhythm to capitalize on demand. *Le Diable à Quatre* itself (1845) was a hugely successful ballet-pantomime, and Adam's music was one of the most frequently arranged scores of the era. Lithographic theatrical prints proliferated during this period as technologies of color printing improved and music publishing became a mass commercial enterprise. The romantic and comic ballet aesthetic represented here—the supernatural encounter, the costume spectacle, the idealized peasant—was the dominant visual language of theatrical dance between 1840 and 1860.

Where it lives

This object is held in the New York Public Library's collection of prints depicting dance. It is a commercial music-publishing artifact from mid-nineteenth-century Paris, where such theater-related sheet-music covers were produced for both French and international markets.

Dance in this work

Questions about this work