"Off, off, you lendings–Come unbutton here" (Shakespeare, King Lear, Act 3, Scene 4)

"Off, off, you lendings–Come unbutton here" (Shakespeare, King Lear, Act 3, Scene 4)

William Sharp

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

In one of a series of engravings Boydell published to reproduce paintings displayed in the Shakespeare Gallery, King Lear has been driven out by his daughters and is buffeted by a storm on a heath. As the king displays his unsettled mind by tearing off his clothes, the Duke of Kent begs him to take shelter. Edgar, another outcast disguised as Tom O'Bedlam, sits at lower right near the Fool. Completing the group, the Duke of Gloucester raises a torch against the darkness. The American born painter West made his name in England painting neoclassical subjects admired by George III, together with heroic modern histories, but here uses a swirling baroque mode suited to a subject that contemporaries would have seen as echoing the madness that afflicted their own king from 1788.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

"Off, off, you lendings–Come unbutton here" (Shakespeare, King Lear, Act 3, Scene 4)"Off, off, you lendings–Come unbutton here" (Shakespeare, King Lear, Act 3, Scene 4)"Off, off, you lendings–Come unbutton here" (Shakespeare, King Lear, Act 3, Scene 4)"Off, off, you lendings–Come unbutton here" (Shakespeare, King Lear, Act 3, Scene 4)"Off, off, you lendings–Come unbutton here" (Shakespeare, King Lear, Act 3, Scene 4)

The Department’s vast collection of works on paper comprises approximately 21,000 drawings, 1.2 million prints, and 12,000 illustrated books created in Europe and the Americas from about 1400 to the present day. Since its foundation in 1916, the Department has been committed to collecting a wide range of works on paper, which includes both pieces that are incredibly rare and lauded for their aesthetic appeal, as well as material that is more popular, functional, and ephemeral. The broad scope of the department’s collecting encourages questions of connoisseurship as well as those pertaining to function and context, and demonstrates the vital role that prints, drawings, and illustrated books have played throughout history.