The Tax Collectors (Les Traitants)

Jean Honoré Fragonard

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The subject of this print has never been verified; the current title first appeared in an 1859 publication. The etching’s crisp style, with flickering highlights and large swaths of untouched white paper, recalls the manner of the Venetian master Giovanni Battista Tiepolo (1696–1770). Fragonard could have seen Tiepolo’s prints during his two stays in Venice (with Saint-Non in 1761 and with Bergeret in 1774), and in Paris, where each new series was avidly sought by collectors.

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