War of Posts

Thomas Colley

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This satire relates to British political factions during the Revolutionary War, and shows Pitt, Keppel, Conway, Burke, Fox, Richmond at left, urging the Devil, at right, to push Sandwich, Amherst, North, Mansfield into the flames of Hell. Behind this drama, the constitution is symbolized by a domed building, with a man in the stocks being given thirteen lashes (a reference to the American colonies), and three figures on a gibbet identified as "an English secretary" (i.e. minister) "an Irish secretary" and "a Scotch secretary."

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