It’s official: I adore the Illustrated London News [this is a Harvard resource I fear, and password-protected]. Once again, it has come to my rescue when I’ve needed solid visual clarification about a historical event. This time (regular readers will remember my earlier Crimean adventure) as a part of the clean-up after our Historical Sheet Music Collections survey, I was cataloging a series of sheet music imprints featuring Marie Taglioni (or so I thought), and after running through the usual complement of images from La Sylphide, I ran across this detached, closely-cropped cover.
While the image wasn’t signed, the style reminded me of John Brandard and I wondered if this image was based on his work. So I began searching various known sources for images related to Taglioni, and wait a minute, who was that other guy … well, totally by chance, I blundered upon this image in the Victoria and Albert Museum’s online collections, so, not originally Taglioni after all, but Adèle Dumilâtre and Marius Petipa. And it WAS based on Brandard!
Still I was somewhat confused, as I’d discovered conflicting information about the man in the image: was it Marius Petipa, or possibly his brother Lucien? Or some other dancer? And what was the ballet? If the original artist was Brandard, this opened up my research options, as he was known to have attended performances and sketched from life. Perhaps if I did some illustration hopping in the Illustrated London News, I would get lucky. Sure enough, searching Dumilâtre and Petipa together, I quickly discovered this image.
It’s Lucien (thought here, as in many places, he is referred to as “M. Petipa” for “Monsieur” which is no doubt where the original confusion was born). Identified as the 1845 performance at London’s Drury Lane, of the ballet The Marble Maiden: this seemed pretty conclusive to me. While the Brandard (and our image after the Brandard) is not a direct copy from the Illustrated London News in the way of Omer Pasha in the Crimean example, it seems clear to me that it came directly from the performance (with some artistic license). More and more I’m coming to the conclusion that sheet music illustrations can provide reliable secondary image material for staged productions. The trick is getting to know your illustrators; ah John, the more I know you, the more I admire you.
[Thanks to Andrea Cawelti, Ward Music Cataloger, for contributing this post.]