Theatrical Troupe on the Road

Eugène Delacroix

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Among the earliest drawings Delacroix made in preparation for works that entered the public sphere are satirical cartoons. Here, he assembles a motley crew of players to criticize the prevailing academic classicism of the theater. The wagon is stuffed with scenery, including a classical column and a board painted with a Greco-Roman god. A Pierrot type leads the group but looks back toward an actor dressed as a Roman soldier rather foolishly riding one of the carthorses. Delacroix’s use of watercolor indicates that he anticipated the lithograph based on this drawing would be hand-tinted, as was common practice with the immensely popular English caricatures he so admired.

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