Dancing with the Didelots

One of James Gillray's most striking dance caricatures is 'Modern Grace; or the Operatical Finale to the Ballet of Alonzo e Caro'. It shows three dancers: Charles-Louis Didelot who had arrived in London in 1796; his young wife Rose, whom he had lured away from the Paris Opera in 1793; and Mademoiselle Parisot, one of the most accomplished dancers of the late 18th century. On their arrival, the Didelots were an instant success, with Rose Didelot's 'grace, dignity and ease' being singled out for praise; she was also praised for 'the graceful disposition of her body', and is frequently pictured in a see-through costume. There was clearly a complicated relationship between these three dancers; Rose is shown as a rather sharp-faced woman with a long nose, a profile accentuated in a later solo print 'No Flower that Blows is like this Rose'. And this particular pose appears in the illustration of the second volume of Rudolph Ackermann's The Microcosm of London, which had illustrations by Thomas Rowlandson (who did the figures), and Auguste Charles Pugin (who provided the architectural details). The ballet supposedly being performed was the 1788 L'Amour et Psiché, revived in 1796, but Rowlandson has re-used Gillray's image to represent the dancers, and as well as examining the inter-relationships of dancers and images. This paper argues that the watercolour version of Modern Grace by Rowlandson at the Yale Centre for British Art, relates in fact to Rowlandson's and Pugin's print.