Object Image

Falstaff at Justice Shallow's Mustering His Recruits (Shakespeare, Henry IV, Part II, Act 3, Scene 2)

Bunbury's "Shakespeare" consisted of twenty-prints published between 1792 and 1797, issued periodically in sets of four. The publisher Thomas Macklin was inspired by the success of Boydell's Shakespeare Gallery to open a rival Poets Gallery in 1787. He then commissioned a set of large watercolors from Bunbury of comic Shakesperean subjects with related prints issued by subscription. The artist was the younger son in an old gentry family who had amused fellow students with comic drawings at Westminster School in London, then at Cambridge University. He became a friend of Thomas Rowlandson, who etched many Bunbury designs. Most of Bunbury's income came, however, from army positions and the patron...
June 1, 1792
Stipple engraving and etching
41.2 x 48.0cm
2018.129
Image and text © Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2019

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The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Permanent collection