About This Image

The photographers names are signed on the photograph at the lower left, and with their blindstamp on the mount. The two French photographers, Paul Emile Pesme and Alphonse Varin, worked together from 1856 to 1860. Identification of the subject in period pencil on the recto of the mount lower left.

Louise Marquet (born in Tours, May 12,1834; died in Paris, December 22, 1890). One of three (or was it five?) probably illegitimate sisters, followed her to-be-well-known siblings, [Marie Louise] Mathilde (1826-1900) and [Josephine Victoire] Delphine (1824-1878), into the corps at the Paris Opéra as a child on Janurary 8, 1841. Because of her sisters (Delphine was the mistress of manager Nestor Roqueplan and Mathilde of Edgard Ney, 'le Prince de la Moskawa'), she was well-placed and secure in her career.

However, she made her way on merit to the position of sujet in 1851, creating many new roles--particularly those of the 'superbe' commanding type--over her long career. Following her retirement in 1879 from the stage, after nearly 40 years as a dancer, she became a ballet-mistress and teacher of deportment at the Conservatoire, and later became maîtresse de ballet at the Opéra-Comique.

Among the many roles she danced during her long career were the Black Fairy in the première of La filleule des fées (1849), which starred Carlotta Grisi as Ysaure; one  of the Seven Vices in Orfa (1852): the High Priestess in Aelia et Mysis (1853); Princess Bathilde in Les Elfes (1856); and the wicked fairy Hamza in Marie Taglioni's Le papillon (1860), which starred Emma Livry.

In 1861 she danced the role of Denise in Le Marché des Puces, and later in the same year she created the role of Countess Aldini in L’Etoile de Messine. In 1863 she danced Bathilde in Giselle, with Martha Muravieva in the title role, and in 1866 she danced Magreb in La Source. In 1865 she appeared in Meyerbeer’s L’Africaine; in 1867 she appeared in a revival of Mazilier’s Le Corsaire, playing the same role she had created in 1856; and later in the same year she danced the role of Queen of the Waters in Le Ballet de la Reine: La Peregrina, a divertissement by Lucien Petipa in Act III of Verdi’s Don Carlos.

She also danced in La Muette de Portici, in Marco Spada (performed at the Paris Opera in 1857) and in Le Dieu et la Bayadère.

The Marquet theater legacy continued through Delphine’s daughter-in-law, 'Louise Marquet' née Loisel, and her daughter, actress Mary Marquet (1895-1979), while Mathilde finally married the baritone Marc Bonnehée (1828-1886).

Louise herself apparently died a Mademoiselle. Whether she lived as one is rather obfuscated by the bright lives of her siblings.

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