Characters, from Jack and the Giant Killer, Plate 5 for a Toy Theater
1870–90
Medium
Lithograph
Dimensions
Sheet: 6 11/16 × 8 7/16 in. (17 × 21.4 cm)
Classification
Prints
Department
Drawings and Prints
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
The Elisha Whittelsey Collection, The Elisha Whittelsey Fund, 1952
Accession Number
52.541.1(5)
Tags
Art Historical Context
This lithograph by Benjamin Pollock, produced between 1870 and 1890, presents characters from the fairy tale “Jack and the Giant Killer” as Plate 5 in a series intended for a toy theater. Printed on a modest sheet measuring roughly 6 by 8 inches the work allowed families to cut out and arrange the figures for miniature performances at home. Pollock was a leading publisher of such “juvenile drama” sheets, and his lithographs brought the excitement of the stage into ordinary Victorian parlors through affordable, colorful prints. Toy theaters enjoyed great popularity in nineteenth-century Britai...