King Henry IV

King Henry IV

William Heath ('Paul Pry')

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Heath’s satire mocks George IV and his mistress Elizabeth, Marchioness Conygham, with the title intended to echo a well known work by Henry Fuseli that shows the fat knight Falstaff at the Boar's Head Tavern, canoodling with Doll Tearsheet, in a scene from Shakespeare’s "King Henry IV, part II." The painting was hung in Boydell’s Shakespeare Gallery, on Pall Mall in London between 1789 and 1805, and was engraved by William Satchwell Leney (see 42.119.534).

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.