The Review

Thomas Rowlandson

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Rowlandson gently satirizes military men, with the long blue coat of the central officer suggesting that he is a navy officer. The company seems to await orders, as officers stand with legs apart and arms crossed, and figures at right have laid their drums on the ground. Full-coated uniforms such as this were in fashion in the middle of the eighteenth century, a period just before Rowlandson's own.

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