Doll Tearsheet, Falstaff, Henry and Poins (Shakespeare, King Henry IV, Part 2, Act 2, Scene 4)

Doll Tearsheet, Falstaff, Henry and Poins (Shakespeare, King Henry IV, Part 2, Act 2, Scene 4)

William Satchwell Leney

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Fuseli was a life-long devotee of Shakespeare, first reading his works as a youth in Zurich, then sketching an elaborate mural scheme devoted to admired plays while in Rome during the 1770s. After settling in London, the artist contributed paintings to John Boydell's Shakespeare Gallery, launched in 1786 as an exhibition cum print-publishing scheme funded by subscribers. Leney's print reproduces Fuseli's conception of the irrepressible Sir John Falstaff, here chided by Doll Tearsheet in a scene from "King Henry the Fourth, part 2."

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Doll Tearsheet, Falstaff, Henry and Poins (Shakespeare, King Henry IV, Part 2, Act 2, Scene 4)Doll Tearsheet, Falstaff, Henry and Poins (Shakespeare, King Henry IV, Part 2, Act 2, Scene 4)Doll Tearsheet, Falstaff, Henry and Poins (Shakespeare, King Henry IV, Part 2, Act 2, Scene 4)Doll Tearsheet, Falstaff, Henry and Poins (Shakespeare, King Henry IV, Part 2, Act 2, Scene 4)Doll Tearsheet, Falstaff, Henry and Poins (Shakespeare, King Henry IV, Part 2, Act 2, 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.