The Pit Door / La Porte du Parterre

Robert Dighton the Elder

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The struggling crowd hoping to attend the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane in London, demonstrates how strenuous attending a play could be in the eighteenth century. At this time, unreserved seats on benches in the pit cost three shillings, wealthier patrons sat in more expensive boxes above, and ordinary folk climbed to the upper galleries. A poster on the wall indicates that the attraction is Sarah Siddons in a royal command performance of The Grecian Daughter. Siddons had established herself in 1782 as the city’s leading tragedienne, with a dramatic style that stirred up extreme emotions in the audience, and ticket demand for her performances far exceeded supply. This mezzotint droll equates the trials of getting into the theater with the emotional ecstasy anticipated by the audience.

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