En Angleterre: Pauvre Jenny!, from "Le Journal Illustré," no. 55

Henry Linton

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This image first appeared as “In the Bitter Cold” in London’s "Illustrated Times" (December 19, 1857), and was reissued in "Le Journal Illustré" in 1865. We are shown a mother and two children evicted into the snow, and related text identifies the subject as “'En Angleterre': Pauvre Jenny!” (In England: Exposure and Starvation--Le froid et la Faim!...Une émouvante nouvelles, cette triste histoire de Jenny et John et de leur deux enfants...a moving novel and sad history of Jenny and John and their two children"). Émile Gigault de Bédollière (1812–1883), who provided the French text, worked for the journal "La Siècle" from 1850, translating stories by Charles Dickens, Sir Walter Scott and Harriet Beecher Stowe. Whether he invented this story, or simply translated it, remains to be determined.

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