The Repeal, or the Funeral of Miss Ame-Stamp

Anonymous, British, 18th century

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

British politicians are imagined processing through the London docks to mourn the repeal of the Stamp Act on March 18, 1766. A year before, Parliament had imposed this excise tax on printed goods imported to the American colonies. Resulting boycotts led British merchants to pressure the government for repeal, and this anti-tax image mocks the act’s leading supporters. Behind two flag bearers, George Grenville (dismissed as chief minister in 1765) carries a small coffin marked "Miss Ame[rica] Stamp." He is followed by Lord Bute, another former chief minister identified by his Scottish bonnet and tartan suit. The London publisher Carington Bowles borrowed the composition from a print issued by a rival that sold thousands of copies. It uses the language of political satire Romeyn de Hooghe developed in Holland, combined with a simple dramatic structure that makes the elaborate allegory easy to understand.

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