Long Thomas and Mad-le G-d Going to the Pantheon in Their Natural Masks

Long Thomas and Mad-le G-d Going to the Pantheon in Their Natural Masks

William Austin

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

In 1773 drawing-master William Austin experimented with the new British print form of caricature and satirized members of London society. This design pokes fun at Sir Thomas Robinson, known as "Long Sir Thomas," who managed Ranelagh Gardens, a popular entertainment center that established masquerades (masked balls) as part of London’s social calendar. In 1773 Long Thomas was in his seventies and here wears an old-fashioned suit to lead his elderly mistress to the Pantheon, London’s newest fashionable gathering spot. That building also held masquerades and the print jokes that Austin and his companion have grown so ugly and short-sighted that their actual faces now function as masks.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Long Thomas and Mad-le G-d Going to the Pantheon in Their Natural MasksLong Thomas and Mad-le G-d Going to the Pantheon in Their Natural MasksLong Thomas and Mad-le G-d Going to the Pantheon in Their Natural MasksLong Thomas and Mad-le G-d Going to the Pantheon in Their Natural MasksLong Thomas and Mad-le G-d Going to the Pantheon in Their Natural Masks

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.