National Museum of Western ArtUeno Park
Picturing the Theater: From Delacroix and Daumier to Toulouse-Lautrec and Klinger
About 50 prints and drawings, plus three paintings, by 19 artists show how nineteenth-century Paris theatre, from Delacroix's Shakespeare to Toulouse-Lautrec's posters, entered art.
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In a Daumier lithograph from 1864, a man asks for the seventh time for his seat back, and the man in it asks what happens if he doesn't. He'll have to leave, comes the answer, which would vex him greatly. The man in the wrong seat has outlived Daumier by nearly 150 years; he now rides the Shinkansen.
About 50 works by 19 artists fill the New Wing's second-floor Prints and Drawings Gallery. They run from Delacroix's lithographs after Faust and Hamlet, made so people could watch a play from their study, through Daumier's audiences and backstage scenes, to the posters and programmes theatres commissioned once colour lithography spread: Chéret, Mucha, Toulouse-Lautrec, Vuillard. Only three are paintings, one a Degas of three dancers in the wings.
Entry is 500 yen, free on the day with a Turner or collection ticket, and for under-18s and over-65s. It's free for all on 3 and 8 November, 13 December and 10 January, and open until 20:00 on Fridays and Saturdays.
Look for
Delacroix's ghost on the terrace
Look for the ghost of Hamlet's father in this 1843 lithograph, his line printed beneath in French: I am thy father's spirit, avenge his foul and unnatural murder.
Daumier's Theater Audience
In this oil on panel, a black-clad group sits in silhouette, faces barely readable, set against the bright front-row box behind them.
Costume designs for Madame Butterfly
Félix Régamey's six 1906 designs for the first Paris production dress Butterfly, the geishas, her uncle the bonze, and Pinkerton and Sharpless, one with fabric on the paper.
Good for
- Cheap Culture
- Evening Visits
- Nerding Out
Skip if
You came for paintings: only three of about 50 works are; the rest are prints and drawings.
With kids
High school students and anyone under 18 get in free.
Also at National Museum of Western Art
- "Shōwa 100th": How Conservation and Restoration Evolved at the NMWA during the Shōwa Period — Van Gogh's Roses and Renoir's Woman with a Hat30 June 2026 – 11 January 2027
- Turner: Painting the Sublime, in Dialogue with Contemporary Art24 October 2026 – 21 February 2027
- Matisse: The Poetry of Black and White20 March 2027 – 19 July 2027
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Image credits
5
- Colorful Asia: Journey through Asia at Tokyo National MuseumCourtesy of Tokyo National Museum
- National Museum of Western ArtJoyofmuseums, CC BY-SA 4.0
- National Museum of Nature and ScienceDaderot, CC0
- Tokyo Metropolitan Art MuseumJoe Mabel, CC BY-SA 2.0
- Tokyo National MuseumWiiii, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0