Les Invisibles (The Invisible Ones)

William Brocas

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This caricature, focused on languid, hyper elegant French ladies and gentlemen, belongs to a type established in Paris by the publisher Aaron Martinet. His series Le Suprême Bon Ton (The Highest Good Taste, ca. 1798-1802) satirized French dress and manners under the Emperor Napoleon and, when the Peace of Amiens briefly opened cross-Channel travel, the images proved popular in Britain. After hostilities resumed in 1803, British printmakers created variations such as this Irish print based on a Gillray design. Impractical hat styles are the focus, specifically poke bonnets for women, with long tunnel-like visors that became modish around 1810. The exaggerated versions here force the wearers to rely on male escorts to walk, although the men’s own high collars and large hats turn them into unreliable guides.

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