Print - A Spanish Dance
Object: Print
Place of origin: Great Britain (painted)

Date: 1850 (painted)
Artist/Maker: Richardson, Thomas Miles the younger, RWS, born 1813 – died 1890 (artist)
Materials and Techniques: Charcoal and watercolour

Credit Line: Given by Dame Marie Rambert

Public access description
The man in this print wears a recognisably Spanish costume, with his toreador hat, bolero jacket and knee breeches, but the woman’s
costume is closer to everyday peasant dress. Most prints of Spanish dance show it in a theatrical context and images of the original peasant dances are comparatively rare. The tight-fitting Spanish flamenco dress with the trained and flounced skirt, which is now synonymous with Spanish dance, developed in the
late 19th century from the working clothes of the Spanish peasants.

Descriptive line
A Spanish Dance. Drawing by Thomas Miles Richardson the younger, 1850.

Physical description
Spanish dancers holding castanets, the man to the left, his body in profile, his head turned looking at his partner over his left raised arm; his right arm is stretched behind. He wears a black Spanish toreador hat, yellow bolero trimmed with white, pink shirt, red cummerbund and white tight breeches with a double pale blue stripe on outer leg. The woman faces the viewer, mirroring her partner’s pose with her right leg forward, her right arm across the body at shoulder height, her left held out behind and head turned to her right looking at her partner. She wears a high mantilla, a bright blue bodice with white puffed sleeves, a pale red striped skirt to the knee under which is a calf-length, pink-washed-blue skirt.