Ballet dancer Beatrice Griffiths photo by Hana Studios Ltd. circa 1920

Description

We are hoping that this photograph will find a new home with someone who loves ballet and the history of ballet.
Anna Pavlova was a Russian prima ballerina. She was a principal artist of the Imperial Russian Ballet and the Ballets Russes of Sergei Diaghilev, but is most recognized for creating the role of The Dying Swan and, with her own company, being the first ballerina to tour the world. During her too-short life, Pavlova taught only eight ballet students, one of them being Beatrice Griffiths. Griffiths toured the world as a member of Pavlova's ballet company. A photograph of Pavlova teaching the young Griffiths, along with four other of the only eight girls Pavlova instructed during her lifetime, is held in the Pavlova Collection of documents held by the University of California (Irvine).
We would like to sell our 41.5cm x 61cm hand-tinted photograph of Beatrice Phillips. The work was produced by the London firm Hana Studios Ltd. in about 1920, we estimate. Hana Studios Ltd was a historic London photography studio active from the late 1890s through the 1930s, famously located at 22 Bedford Street, Strand, known for theatrical portraits and performance archives held in major collections like the National Portrait Gallery and Victoria and Albert Museum, which holds 27 works by the studio.
The photograph was purchased in 1975 in an antique shop in Brighton. It is mounted to a hard board of some sort. The photo has four areas of obvious damage (one actually a missing spot where the paper stuck to the glass under which it was framed for decades -- that frame is badly damaged and the mounted photo has been removed from it) -- but we understand that they are repairable and, indeed, the entire photo would benefit greatly from being worked on by a professional conservator or document restoration specialist. We believe that such a professional would be able to remove the photo from the board, but cannot say with any certainty that this is true.
We are asking £100 for this piece of ballet history. Local pickup in Lewes only, as we have no idea how to safely ship it, and we would expect the cost of any shipping to be prohibitively expensive.
Thanks for looking.

Posted: 51 days ago

Ad ID: 1800775045