Some of the Drolleries of the Great Exhibition 1851

Curator: This lively print is entitled "Some of the Drolleries of the Great Exhibition," made by George Cruikshank in 1851. The artist uses pen and engraving to present his vision, which you can currently view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. What's your immediate reaction to this bustling sheet of vignettes? Editor: It feels like stumbling upon a secret world—like catching woodland creatures acting out human comedies just when they thought no one was looking! There is a bit of playful anarchy, isn’t there? Curator: I find that perception so accurate. Cruikshank employs animals as stand-ins to satirize Victorian society's foibles. By embedding the animals within genre scenes and history-painting parodies, there is a lot of societal criticism being subtly presented through humorous characters. Editor: Absolutely! Like visual proverbs—each tiny scene packed with social commentary. Take the foxes: in several panels, they assume very formal and stuffy human-like poses which suggests mockery, like actors on a grand stage, satirizing our vanity and ridiculous habits. Curator: Spot on. There are multiple visual jokes and allusions that would be instantly recognizable to the contemporary viewer. This form of "drollery", these small comical scenes, speaks to a much older tradition of marginalia—those witty annotations and illustrations you see in medieval manuscripts, which really served as a kind of visual pressure release valve. Editor: Yes! I feel there's a psychological weight to them—as if those Victorian folks knew they needed to laugh at themselves or else burst! Curator: Indeed. The exhibition was this celebration of progress and industry but perhaps the artist’s underlying suggestion is whether society itself was truly advancing. Editor: I'm suddenly inspired to stage my own absurdist animal ballet, full of social critique, of course! This engraving has awoken the inner satirist in me, thank you for pointing that out! Curator: Always a pleasure. Perhaps that’s precisely the long-term influence of Cruikshank’s drolleries - they ignite our imagination, inspiring new artistic interpretations to playfully interrogate established values.