Fanny Elssler, ballet du Diable boiteux

What you are looking at

A young woman in theatrical dress stands alone against a plain background, captured in a moment of expressive gesture. She wears a Romantic-era costume: a fitted bodice in rose-pink silk with black lace trim and puffed sleeves, and a voluminous skirt composed of three tiers—the upper layer rose-pink, the middle and lower tiers black lace with gold ribbon borders. Her dark hair is styled up and back. Her right arm is raised expressively overhead with the hand curved; her left arm extends to the side at shoulder height, palm up. She stands on the ball of her right foot, with her left leg extended or lightly touching the ground, suggesting the lifted, weightless quality of Romantic ballet. The setting is minimal: a line suggesting terrain at her feet, with a few delicate flowering plants or grasses rendered in soft pencil, lending an outdoor, pastoral quality despite the plain background. The entire composition is contained within a ruled rectangular frame on aged, cream-colored paper.

The dancing

A single female dancer captured in a pose of controlled expression and lyrical arm movement. Both arms are held at or above shoulder height in an open, welcoming frame—the raised arm curved gracefully, the other extended horizontally with an open hand. Her torso is upright and engaged. Her stance on the ball of the foot, with apparent lightness and lift through the supporting leg, demonstrates the technique of Romantic-era ballet. The pose reads as momentary and expressive rather than grounded, consistent with the ethereal, otherworldly aesthetic of mid-19th-century theatrical ballet.

The dance depicted

This is a Romantic ballet dancer, almost certainly performing in or associated with *Le Diable boiteux* (The Lame Devil), a popular ballet-pantomime of the 1830s–1840s. The dancer is named in the inscription as Fanny Elssler, one of the great ballerinas of the Romantic era and a celebrated exponent of both classical technique and character dances. The costume—the pink silk bodice and tiered black lace skirt—is consistent with Romantic-period staging. The pose itself is characteristic of Romantic ballet: the lifted, ethereal quality; the expressive arm placement; the suggestion of weightlessness and spiritual presence rather than athletic display. Elssler was famous for combining technical brilliance with dramatic intensity and earthy charisma, qualities that the artist has attempted to capture here.

How it was made

This is a hand-colored engraving or aquatint, executed with fine line work in the figure and softer tonal handling in the dress and background. The image bears evidence of hand coloring in the rose-pink bodice, black lace, and gilt detailing. The technique—combining engraved line with hand-applied watercolor or gouache—was the standard method for circulating theatrical portraits in the 1830s and 1840s. This allowed for wider distribution than oil painting and more vivid color than print alone, making such works affordable to theater enthusiasts and dancers' admirers, and helping to establish Elssler's image across Europe and America.

About this work

A hand-colored engraving of the ballerina Fanny Elssler in Romantic-era costume and pose, likely from a production of *Le Diable boiteux*, one of the defining works of the Romantic ballet period. The work is a theatrical portrait of the Romantic movement's ideal of the dancer: ethereal, expressive, technically refined, and commanding of the stage. It documents both the costume conventions and the aesthetic principles of mid-19th-century ballet, capturing the dancer at the height of her fame and influence. The image circulated among the ballet-going public as both a souvenir of performance and an advertisement of Elssler's artistry.

How to look at it

Notice the moment chosen: not a leap or dramatic turn, but a poised, expressive stillness—the dancer suspended in emotion and control rather than action. This reflects Romantic ballet's interest in the dancer's inner state and the body as vehicle for feeling. Observe the line of the supporting leg and the lift through the torso, which convey the peculiar weightlessness that Romantic technique cultivated. The costume is essential: the tiered skirt and fitted bodice established a visual vocabulary of Romantic theatricality that endured for decades. The background—minimal, with only suggestive foliage—directs all attention to the body and face, a convention of theatrical portraiture that emphasized the dancer as the subject, not the setting.

The period

The Romantic era in ballet (roughly 1830–1850) was marked by a radical shift toward the ethereal, the exotic, and the otherworldly. Marie Taglioni in *La Sylphide* (1832) established the aesthetic of the weightless, spiritualized female dancer; Fanny Elssler rose to prominence in response, not by imitating Taglioni but by bringing fire, earthiness, character, and dramatic intensity to Romantic roles. Both dancers became icons, and their images circulated widely in prints, engravings, and lithographs—a crucial form of theatrical publicity and fan culture. *Le Diable boiteux*, adapted from a Spanish picaresque novel and choreographed as a ballet-pantomime, was one of the great vehicles for Elssler's talents; it allowed her to combine the ethereal Romantic vocabulary with character dances and dramatic storytelling. The hand-colored engraving was the dominant medium for reproducing such portraits, combining the precision of line engraving with the immediacy of hand-applied color.

Where it lives

The work is held in the New York Public Library's *Prints Depicting Dance* collection, a major institutional source for visual documentation of theatrical dance from the 18th century onward. Such hand-colored engravings were produced in relatively large runs for sale to theater audiences and collected by enthusiasts of dance and theater.

Dance in this work

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