Dilettanti-Theatricals
James Gillray (published by Hannah Humphrey (English, c. 1745-1818))
published February 18, 1803
- Medium
- Hand-colored etching and aquatint on paper
- Classification
- Dimensions
- Image: 30 × 48.5 cm (11 13/16 × 19 1/8 in.); Plate: 31.5 × 49.2 cm (12 7/16 × 19 3/8 in.); Sheet: 35.5 × 54 cm (14 × 21 5/16 in.)
- Culture
- England
- Museum
- Art Institute of Chicago, Prints and Drawings
- Credit line
- Gift of Thomas F. Furness in memory of William McCallin McKee
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Teens profiles and older: its museum says too little about what it shows to place it for younger viewers. How works are placed
View at the Art Institute of Chicago
About this work
While ancient theater has continued to inspire the modern world, satirist James Gillray leaves little doubt as to the caliber of the performers seen here. The Muses of theater, Thalia and Melpomene, are invoked on panels of the dressing room screen along with Cecilia, the patron saint of music, the composer George Frideric Handel, the playwright William Shakespeare, and the actor David Garrick. The fierce Melpomene indeed looks rather like Lady Macbeth, with a dagger and a chalice raised above her head as if to pounce on the amateur theatricals trilling and carousing below.
Description © Art Institute of Chicago, CC BY 4.0
