Odd Characters

Thomas Rowlandson

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Rowlandson and Woodward collaborated on this ebullient panel of heads tucked behind ribbons, as though into old-fashioned note boards. The dense gathering includes a preacher, a soldier, several well-dressed women, and a range of grotesque faces, and resembles a crowd assembled for a performance at the theater. Figures costumed as a Turk, a fanciful Hussar, and a Harlequin would be at home on the stage.

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