The Spanish dancer and actress Rosario Guerrero (1880–unknown) first performed in Madrid before moving to Paris where she debuted with great success in the Folies-Bergére. In 1903 she was acclaimed for her performance as Carmen at London’s Alhambra Theater. Florence Ziegfeld engaged her for the Lyric Theatre in New York, and until 1919 Guerrero traveled to New York every year for performances there.

Friedrich August von Kaulbach, a well-known German painter, studied at the Munich Academy of Art in 1872 before touring Italy and then France. In 1888 the artist left Paris to take over as the head of the Munich Academy, succeeding the renowned director Karl von Piloty. Kaulbach first painted Guerrero in 1903–1904 and completed at least six paintings of her as well as studies and drawings. This painting depicts the dancer in the role of Carmen—the plunging neckline and her undraped upper arms underscoring her beauty. Guerrero’s Carmen was described by her contemporaries as “a fine, resolute, instinctive animal—cunning, pitiless, amorous, and fearless.”

Artists in late-nineteenth-century Munich, themselves regarded as “stars,” were fond of portraying the most famous dancers and actresses of their day. In the Frye Art Museum’s Founding Collection there are several portraits of such celebrities painted by Kaulbach, Franz von Lenbach, and Franz von Stuck.

Rosario Guerrero is on view in the exhibition Tête-à-tête beginning February 6, 2010.