Culture Watch - Tamara Karsavina

A painting of Tamara Karsavina revealed at London’s Wellcome Library after years of being wrongly identified:

See here for the painting.

(And you can see the likeness of the painting to the person here.)

Tamara decided to learn English after achieving the position of Prima Ballerina Assoluta in Corsair in 1909, and so perhaps the pages in her hand are by Swinburne or Robert Lewis Stevenson – two authors she read to help her learn. Or maybe she is reading a letter from home.

Tamara Karsavina lived in Frognal, Hampstead in the early 1960s. Many Hampstead houses declare the names of people who lived between their walls, but there isn’t a plaque on Tamara’s house.