The Moray Minstrels (Invitation card of Arthur James Lewis)

William Harcourt Hooper

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This printed invitation was created for the well-to-do silk merchant Arthur James Lewis who, before his 1867 marriage, regularly welcomed male friends to Moray Lodge, his home on Campden Hill, overlooking London's Holland Park. Once a month, between January and March, singers would gather on Saturday evenings at 8:30 pm to perform modern and ancient works; with oyster suppers served at eleven. Lewis was himself an amateur artist who joined the Junior Etching Club and welcomed London artists, such as J. M. Whistler, to his home. The invitation captures the jolly informality of Lewis's entertaining (see 58.503.1 for the related drawing). The cut woodblock for this print is in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

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