An Officer of the Corps of Bowmen

William Alexander

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

In 1792 Alexander was appointed as draftsman to accompany the British embassy to the emperor's court in Peking, led by Lord Macartney. After returning to England in 1794, the artist illustrated the official report, and several publications of his own, with this drawing of a Chinese bowman engraved for plate 20 in "The Costume of China, or Picturesque Representations of The Dress and Manners of the Chinese" (1805).

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Department’s vast collection of works on paper comprises approximately 21,000 drawings, 1.2 million prints, and 12,000 illustrated books created in Europe and the Americas from about 1400 to the present day. Since its foundation in 1916, the Department has been committed to collecting a wide range of works on paper, which includes both pieces that are incredibly rare and lauded for their aesthetic appeal, as well as material that is more popular, functional, and ephemeral. The broad scope of the department’s collecting encourages questions of connoisseurship as well as those pertaining to function and context, and demonstrates the vital role that prints, drawings, and illustrated books have played throughout history.

Metropolitan Museum of Art