Interior of Westminster Hall

Tony Beltrand

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Lepère made this print to accompany an article on the explosions orchestrated by the Irish Republican Brotherhood, known as the Fenian dynamite campaign, in London on January 24, 1885, published in Le Monde Illustré a week later. The caption in the journal notes that Lepère based his wood engravings on photographs, which were clearly taken before the bombings. Lepère served as the main draftsman for Le Monde Illustré from 1881 and employed Tony Beltrand (1847–1904), Eugène Dété (1848–1922), and Frédéric Florian (1858–1926) in his workshop to help with the time-consuming task of engraving. The initials "B.D.F" on the lower right indicate their involvement with this block. This proof without letters may have been part of a restrike in 1916 for a collection of prints from the publication, Les Bois du Monde Illustré.

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