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Sketch for "Mrs. Pottles Can't Abide a Crowd"
by John Leech
About the Artwork
Created for a cartoon in Punch magazine, this satirical sketch shows an older woman climbing to her house’s roof to see fireworks rather than face the street crowds. Illustrated magazines like Punch played an important role in shaping Victorian visual culture. They also offered artists a way to reach wider audiences and a source of steady income. John Leech joined Punch soon after its founding in 1841. His weekly sketches helped shape the magazine’s light humor, which was aimed at the middle class. Leech’s depictions of everyday people and use of sequential scenes were important precedents for modern comics.
Exhibition history
Humor in Prints. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (September 13-October 28, 1934). Fairy Tales and Fables: Illustration and Storytelling in Art. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (May 4-September 8, 2024).
Quick Overview
- Artist
- John Leech (British, 1817–1864)
- Date
- 1856
- Medium
- graphite
- Dimensions
- Sheet: 16.4 x 15.4 cm (6 7/16 x 6 1/16 in.)
- Type
- Drawing
- Classification
- Drawing
- Department
- Drawings
- Credit line
- Dudley P. Allen Fund
- Accession no.
- 1924.1004
More by John Leech in museum collections
Data retrieved from the Cleveland Museum of Art on October 8, 2026. The museum may have updated its record since.
Open-access museum record · AT-00011513
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