The Public Promenade

The Public Promenade

Louis Philibert Debucourt

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

An accomplished printmaker and social satirist, Debucourt matched wits with British caricaturists as revolutions roiled at home and abroad. While Paris prepared for a bloodbath, Debucourt pictured the swells admiring each other in the Palais Royale gardens. Rowlandson's color aquatint of the satisfied crowd in London's lush Vauxhall Gardens provided inspiration.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Public PromenadeThe Public PromenadeThe Public PromenadeThe Public PromenadeThe Public Promenade

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.