An Antiquarian

Frederick George Byron

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

A shortsighted antiquarian approaches an Egyptian mummy and is startled to find it wearing spectacles and grinning at him with amusement. Rowlandson delighted in mocking the foibles of his countrymen. In this case his target was the taste for antiquities that flourished in England during the eighteenth century and led to the formation of gentlemanly societies and institutions such as the British Museum. Rowlandson etched this vigorous design himself, but the color washes would have been added in the shop of his publisher, William Holland.

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