Mrs. Robinson as Perdita

Richard Cosway

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This lovely young woman seated in a park, fingering a spindle wound with thread and accompanied by her dog, is Mary Robinson. When she performed the role of Perdita in an adaption of Shakespeare's "Winter's Tale," staged by David Garrick in 1779, George, Prince of Wales fell in love with her, and she became his mistress for two years. The artist Cosway enjoyed a long career as a fashionable society portraitist and worked in a range of media. Here he uses watercolor for a small full length image that suggestively links the subject's life on and off the stage--Robinson is seated in an English landscape, but rustic elements of her gown and her spindle refer to her stage identity as Perdita, the adopted daughter of shepherds loved by a prince.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

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.

Metropolitan Museum of Art