The Rival Queens – Mary Queen of Scots Defying Queen Elizabeth

Currier & Ives

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

In 1567, a powerful group of lords forced queen Mary Stuart to abdicate in favor of her infant son James. A few weeks later Mary fled to England to seek help from her second cousin Elizabeth I but, was instead placed under house arrest, and remained in England for nineteen years--eventually executed for plotting to have Elizabeth assassinated. The present dramatic confrontation could not have occurred because the two never met in person. The New York firm of Currier & Ives grew from a printing business established by Nathaniel Currier (1813–1888) in 1835. Expansion led, in 1857, to a partnership with James Merritt Ives (1824–1895). The firm operated until 1907, lithographing over 4,000 subjects for distribution across America and Europe. This uncolored example of their production demonstrates how, until the 1880s, images were printed in monochrome, with color added later by women who worked for the company.

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