Invitation to a Benefit Dinner from Hubert von Herkomer to Thomas Agnew

Sir Hubert von Herkomer

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Herkomer designed this lithographed invitation for an annual London dinner that raised funds for the Artists' General Benevolent Institution for the Relief of Distressed Artists, Their Widows and Orphans. The vignette represents the tragic death of an artist attended by two young children, with a female figure symbolizing Painting sitting by the bedside. Below, Herkomer invites the London art dealer Thomas Agnew to attend the dinner as his guest, then offers him first refusal on a painting ready for the Royal Academy's annual summer exhibition. The work that Herkomer calls "an English subject" must have been "Eventide: A Scene in the Westminster Union," which he showed at the Academy in 1878.

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