The Woman in White

The Woman in White

William Harcourt Hooper

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Walker designed this poster for Wilkie Collins's "The Woman in White," staged at the Olympic Theatre, London in 1871-2. Collins adapted the script from his enormously successful mystery novel published in 1859, and Walker was a friend. Considered the first theatrical poster by a well-known artist, the image represents the actress Anne Catherick swathed in a white cloak, flinging open a church door to step out into a graveyard at night.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

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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.