Drury Lane

James McNeill Whistler

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

When Whistler returned to London from Venice, he explored the narrow streets around Covent Garden and created this image of a picturesque corner shop glimpsed through a dark passageway, with foreground street enlivened by children. Drury Lane at this time was a poor area filled with tumbledown buildings and also the center of the city's theater district.The subtle spatial layering recalls effects developed by the artist in Italy and this print was included in A Set of Twenty-Six Etchings (known as the "Second Venice Set"), published by Dowdeswell and Thbaudeau in 1886.

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