Dancers: Tamara Karsavina

 

Max Pollak

  1886 - 1970 (biography)

c. 1925  

drypoint and color aquatint 

18 3/16 x 13 13/16" platemark 

pencil, lower right 

27/100 (only around 30 printed) 

pencil titled in lower left; pencil editioned in lower center; pencil annotated "printed a. 30" in lower left sheet corner beside red Friedl Pollak Collection stamp 

 

cream laid 

published 

artist 

23883 

$400.00 

Tamara Platonovna Karsavina was born on March 9, 1885, daughter of principle dancer and mime of the Imperial Ballet of Saint Petersburg, Russia, Platon Karsavin. She was trained first by dancer Vera Joukova and then her father, and in 1894 she was accepted into the Imperial Ballet School. Though famous for being one of the most demanding and exacting dance schools in the world, Karsavina graduated ahead of schedule in 1902, when she was eighteen. She became one of the youngest prima ballerinas in the Imperial Ballet soon thereafter.

Her popularity grew and she was frequently invited to perform in Paris with the Ballets Russes, often with famed dancer Vaslav Nijinsky, and when political upheaval gripped Russia in 1918, she moved there with her husband, British diplomat Henry Bruce. Her reputation as one of Russia's foremost prima ballerias alongside Anna Pavlova made them rivals, but, despite this, they were also friends. Among Karsavina's legacies was her key role in establishing the Royal Ballet in London.

Tamara Karsavina died in London in 1978. Such was her reputation that her passing was marked by a plaque on the wall of St. Paul's Church in Covent Garden. Under her name it is written, "prima ballerina absoluta."