Garrick Speaking the Jubilee Ode

Caroline Watson

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

In 1769, David Garrick organized the Shakespeare Jubilee, a three-day extravaganza held at Stratford-upon-Avon between September 6th and 9th with months of advance publicity. An opening dinner was followed by the unveiling of a new statue of the Bard at the town hall, and Garrick's declamation of an ode written for the occasion. A concluding pageant had to be cancelled because of torrential rain, but was later restaged at the Drury Lane Theatre in London and ran for ninety performances. Pine here represents Garrick speaking near the statue surrounded by characters from the plays. His original painting was shown, with six other Shakesperean subjects, in the Great Room, Spring Gardens in 1782, then engraved by Watson. When Pine departed for America, Boydell bought the plates and reissued this version of the print.

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