The Dyson Children

John Downman

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Downman here portrays a baby in a wheeled cart tugging at a kite held by one of two older boys. These are probably the children of Jeremiah Dyson (1757-1835), clerk of the House of Commons, who married Elizabeth Collins in 1781. Their grandfather, Jeremiah Dyson (1722-1776), was Lord of the Treasury and Privy Counsellor to George III, and old labels on the back of the frame that once contained this drawing identify the sitters as his children. This could not be possible if the drawing dates to 1787, because Jeremiah senior died in 1776 and his wife in 1769, while the oldest child here appears to be under six years old.

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