The Russian ballerina Anna Pavlova (1881–1931) was the most celebrated classical dancer of her time, admired for the poetic quality of her movement. She made her debut as soloist with the Imperial Russian Ballet in 1899, but gained fame when she danced with Nijinsky in Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes in Paris in 1909.

The Observer critic wrote on 16 April 1911: ‘Mr. Lavery’s portrait of the Russian dancer, Anna Pavlova, caught in a moment of graceful, weightless movement … Her miraculous, feather-like flight, which seems to defy the law of gravitation’.