A Sketch from Nature

William Paulet Carey

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

A brothel scene with a fat bawd at left leaning back in an armchair and sleeping in a drunken stupor. She spills her glass onto a dog who eagerly laps at the contents. At center, two couples embrace. An officer at center leans on a table and holds a bottle while slinging his leg over a woman's lap. At right another young woman wrestles with a middle aged man whose wig is held aloft by the woman behind him.

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