One of the better-known dance illustrations from the Regency era is the 1817 "Group of Waltzers", an engraving by Jean Alexandre Allais (1792-1850) published in the February 1, 1817, issue of the ladies' magazine La Belle Assemblée. At left is a black and white scan (click to enlarge). A photograph of an uncolored original may be seen in the Digital Collections of the New York Public Library.
There are also some beautiful individually-colored versions floating around the net, which were probably pulled out of actual issues of the magazine (ouch!) A very nice one from the collection of author Louise Allen may be seen at the blog Jane Austen's London (scroll down), where it is mistakenly described as a picture of a waltz class, an error I have seen elsewhere as well. I'm not sure how the "waltz class" idea got started, but let's look at what was actually said in the pages of the magazine about this particular engraving:
The festive season of Christmas ushered in that period when Terpsichore leads her light footed and youthful votaries to the gaily-lighted up dome; and Britain's daughters, unrivalled in accomplishments as in virtue and beauty, tread the mazes of the intricate dance to the sound of the melodious harp, the well-toned violin, and full martial band. The season for dancing, thus joyfully commenced, is now in its prime, and we have not only presented our fair readers with the most elegant dress for such an occasion, but we have added a group of dancers as an embellishment to our present Number.
--- from "General Observations on Fashion and Dress", La Belle Assemblée, February 1, 1817, p. 34
Weirdly, that little introduction is actually given after the description of the plate. Someone wasn't thinking when they did the layouts!
Here is the actual description:
It is so well known that dancing, from the earliest ages, with persons of all denominations and in all countries, has been esteemed not only a species of polite amusement and recreative pleasure, but also a healthy exercise, so as to require scarcely any further comment to recommend it. Waltzing is a species of this amusement; and notwithstanding that it is capable, from the beautiful simplicity of its graceful movements, of affording to its votaries much pleasing and delightful practice, many prejudices have long existed against it, arising from the extravagant manner of performing it peculiar to those countries in which it was till lately so generally practiced. By the more immediate and recent extensive communication with the Continent, waltzing has become a prevalent species of amusement n this country; and that it is equally chaste with quadrilles, English country dances, &c. becomes clearly obvious on the perusal of a late publication by Mr. Wilson, Dancing-Master, entitled "A Description of the correct Method of German and French Waltzing." The Embellishment to which this subject refers, represents a lady and gentleman performing the French slow waltz; the lady having (what is technically termed) turned a Pirouette, and the gentleman performed a Pas de Bourie [sic]. The three ladies in the centre are performing an Allemande waltz: the composition of which, in point of beautiful figure, attitude, and varied effect, affords ample opportunity to the dancers of displaying all the grace, easy, and elegance of which the human figure is capable. The couple on the right are represented as performing the Jetté, or quick Sauteuse waltz; in the performance of which the agility of the dancers may be fully displayed, as it can only be properly performed by "tripping it on the light fantastic toe;" it also affords pleasing, and occasionally desirable, recreation after enjoying the performance of the more easy and graceful movements of which the slow waltz is composed.
--- Explanation of "Group of Walzers", La Belle Assemblée, February 1, 1817, pp. 33-34
Notice that nowhere did the writer suggest this being a depiction of either a dance school or a ballroom. This engraving was not meant as an illustration of any scene in particular. While musicians and background observers were added to jazz things up a bit, a dance class illustration would include the stereotypical dancing master with a fiddle, and a ballroom scene would have a lot more dancers.
"Group of Waltzers" is more akin to the famous frontispiece of Regency dancing master Thomas Wilson's 1816 book, A Description of the correct Method of German and French Waltzing, which may be seen here. The different couples in the frontispiece are not meant to represent an actual circle of dancers doing a single dance; they are individual illustrations of different steps and "attitudes" of the arms for four different waltzes. "Group of Waltzers" is a similar collage of three possible forms of this trendy new dance.
Two of those forms were pulled from Wilson's book, of which there is prominent mention in the explanation above. Wilson advertised his books in La Belle Assemblée, so this was likely a bit of friendly product placement for a commercial connection. A clear line of separation between editorial and advertising content was not a particular concern in the early nineteenth century! I doubt that Wilson either paid for it or had any input on the text of the explanation, though.
Regarding the content of the illustration:
Neither the writer nor Allais seem to have read Wilson's book particularly closely, since the illustration of the "French slow waltz" (Wilson phrases it "slow French waltz") is not particularly accurate relative to Wilson's description. There is some debate over the exact foot placement in the Wilson's slow French waltz, but nothing in the description leaves the dancers side by side with both the gentleman's hands on the lady's ribcage.
The position in the engraving is closest to Wilson's ninth "attitude" of the arms from his waltz manual's frontispiece, which was called Le Couronnement (The Coronation) in a later source. A detail of this attitude from the frontispiece is shown at left (click to enlarge).
Allais also gets the gentleman's feet wrong; Wilson's slow French waltz called for both dancers on their toes throughout. It was Wilson's German waltz which was done on the flat foot.
The "Allemande Waltz", the three ladies with arms intertwined behind their backs, is the one which is not described in Wilson, which is what makes me believe that this was whole "embellishment" was not simply a disguised advertisement by Wilson himself. This is also the one I am most skeptical about as a genuine social waltz.
The idea of a waltz for three certainly existed on the European continent in the 1820s, and possibly earlier. A "Triolet Waltz" for a gentleman and two ladies was described in 1829 in Eduard Helmke's Neue Tanz und Bildunsschule (Leipzig), as shown at left (click to enlarge) and is mentioned in a number of other sources as well, possibly inspired by earlier set dances done with trios rather than couples. It did not involve traveling around in that arms-entwined-behind position, however.
A more likely influence might be the "fancy dances" (for performance rather than social use) for three called pas de trois, such as those diagrammed and partly described in the manuscript Dance Book T. B. 1826, or the allemande à trois, which was a variation on the usual allemande for two dancers. Many of the arm positions of the allemande made their way into the waltz, though I don't believe that the shown position is one of them. But it's not impossible for someone to have conceived a sort of valse à trois independently of the Triolet and called it "Allemande Waltz". I can't actually think of any source for this, however, and without more documentation than one demonstrably inaccurate engraving, I'm more inclined to consider it either something from the stage or an exercise of artistic imagination on the part of either the writer or the engraver. I'd be delighted to be proven wrong, though!
The "Jetté, or quick Sauteuse waltz" is another dance directly out of Wilson, but it turns quickly and tightly and would be more-or-less impossible to do in the wide-open position shown in the engraving. I suspect that Allais was inspired by some of the waltz caricatures that appeared over the years in Parisian publications like Le Bon Genre, parts of two illustrations from which are shown below (click to enlarge). On the left is a detail from the 1806 "La Sauteuse", and on the right, a detail from "La Waltz" from 1810. It's easy to see the similarity in the arm positions from the first and the feet from the second.
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