In her autobiography Fonteyn recalls meeting and falling in love with Tito Arias in Cambridge in 1937 where she was dancing with the Vic-Wells Ballet in May of that year, and where he was at University. She recounts how she was unsure of his feelings for her, but felt that hers for him were far stronger, for this reason she agonized over the dedication she wrote for him on this photograph ....I lived on a cloud until he sailed for Panama to spend the long vacation at home. He had given me a Panamanian coin bearing the date 1936, the last year of his father's second presidency. I gave him a photograph, dedicated in my tiny shy handwriting, and, after much consideration, with the words 'For my dear Tito from Margot.' I was deeply concerned that the message should not overstate the feeling for him that it would be correct for me to hold, in view of the fact that he had not expressed the degree of his regard for me. On the other hand, I did not want to understate my love in case he should think I did not care at all... Seventeen years later, after barely keeping in contact for fifteen years, Margot and Tito were married on February 6th, 1955.

See lot 26