Miss Horton as Morgana

Miss Horton as Morgana

Isaac Robert Cruikshank

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Priscilla Horton (later Reed) was a singer and dancer who appeared on the London stage from the age of ten. In 1837 she joined the Covent Garden company managed by William Charles Macready and here appears as Morgana (Morgan Le Fay), the sorceress of Arthurian legend, perhaps in one of the "fairy burlesques" popular on the London stage in the late 1830s.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

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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.