Mendoza

James Gillray

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The famous British boxer Daniel Mendoza appears here in the ring ready to begin. In the preceding years, he had triumphed in twenty-seven matches until January 9, 1788 when he fell to a former mentor, Richard Humphreys, in one of the era's most celebrated confrontations. The present image was published in anticipation of their rematch on May 6, 1788 (that event would be held in a specially constructed building near Stilton and result in a contested decision). Mendoza was 5 feet seven inches tall and 160 pounds, of Jewish-Portugese descent, and adopted a scientific approach to pugilism that compensated for his relatively small size. In this finely aquatinted image Gillray avoids caricature, idealizes the boxer and shows spectators expressing a subtle range of anticipatory emotions (see 59.583 for a 1788 portrait of Humphreys).

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