Mab and Cupid (Mab et Cupidon) 

Alphonse Legros created this etching, "Mab and Cupid," sometime in the late 19th century. Legros was French, but he spent much of his career in Britain. The image depicts Mab, the Queen of the Fairies from Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, whispering into the ear of Cupid, the God of Love. Mab is a figure who delivers dreams to humans, and so here she may be offering inspiration to Cupid or perhaps scheming about the chaos he might cause. Legros was committed to etching as a medium of democratic artmaking, and he taught at the Slade School of Art in London. The image might be understood in the context of the late 19th century revival of interest in printmaking. To understand the image more fully, we could look at studies of Shakespeare’s influence on Victorian culture and histories of art education in Britain. Thinking about the social and institutional context helps us to interpret the art of the past.