£252
Rare Books, Manuscripts, Maps & Photographs | 792
Auction: 19 June 2024 from 10:00 BST
Oval gelatin silver print by Alfred Ellis & Walery of London, inscribed by Pavlova ‘Ion, son souvenir, Anna Pavlova’ in black ink, mounted on card with studio's details printed on verso, 19.8 x 14.8cm, a little surface-wear along edge, a few faint creases, pencil and ink annotations (including date) and mounting residue to verso
Inscribed by Pavlova for Scottish army officer and journalist Ion Smeaton Munro (1883-1970) during the Imperial Russian Ballet's week-long residence in Glasgow in November 1912, with a mounted newspaper cutting of an article by Munro for the Glasgow Herald in 1956 recalling the encounter. Munro was at the time working for the Scots Pictorial and held what he believed to be an unsuccessful interview with Pavlova after the company's opening night at the city's King's Theatre. The next day he visited the company's lodgings on Bath Street and unintentionally endeared himself to the company secretary by offering to run a simple errand. Pavlova reappeared - ‘or rather she was just miraculously there’ - and the pair spoke at length about the balletic art. ‘To see the truth of these things at close hand I was invited to watch the dancing from the wings of the theatre stage, and on the following nights I was entranced to see how a cheery, squad little Russian woman darted round the back of the scenery with a great ermine blanket to enfold Anna Pavlova in her temporary exits in a sustained ballet … On one occasion, with a smiling challenge in her expression, Pavlova danced off the stage and right up to where I was standing, doing a series of what I believe are called relevés en tournant - which meant that this thistledown vision had instep muscles as strong as steel’.