Pastime in Ancient Egypt

Charles William Sharpe

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Harpists here accompany musicians and dancers who entertain the Pharaoh and his family within an interior adorned with lotus topped columns and a sculpture resembling a mummy case. Sharpe's engraving reproduces Alma-Tadema's 1863 painting (Harris Museum and Art Gallery, Preston), made shortly after he visited Italy and met Georg Ebers, an Egyptologist who encouraged a life-long fascination with the ancient world. "Pastimes [rather than Pastime] in Ancient Egypt" was shown at the Paris Salon of 1864 and won a gold medal, then was sent to the 1876 Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia, America’s first international fair. At that time Gebbie & Barrie published this engraving in a commemorative catalogue (a similar print by Sharpe, perhaps an earlier state, had appeared in London's "The Art Journal" in April 1874.)

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