Balloon Ascending Near the Entrance to Lord's Cricket Ground, 1839

Robert Bremmel Schnebbelie

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Balloon ascents were popular spectacles throughout the 19th century and often depicted by artists. Here, well-to-do men and women have come in carriages, and vendors and works stopped on their rounds, to watch Mr. Hampton's balloon straining at the ropes. The site is the St. John's Wood entrance to Lord's Cricket Ground, and the event took place on June 7, 1839.

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