Vive la France, "French" Style in Broadway

Alfred E. Baker

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This image of a dapper gentleman wearing a top hat and tailcoat, with ribbon on his lapel, and escorting two ladies similarly dressed in shawls and bonnets with veils may caricature Edward Dechaux, a prominent art dealer who also manufactured canvases for artists, stamping his name on the back (an example is at the New York Historical Society (for related prints see 54.90.1083 and 54.90.1357-.1358).

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