The Allied Bakers or the Corsican Toad in the Hole

George Cruikshank

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

A few days after this print appeared Napoleon abdicated his imperial crown. To convey this dramatic reversal of fortune, Humphrey and Cruikshank transformed a famous 1806 composition by Gillray (shown nearby). The bakers are now allied generals who prepare to consign the tiny figure of the fallen emperor to the flames (although Napoleon was not executed but exiled). Gebhardt von Blücher, who led Prussian troops to victory over the French at Leipzig in 1813, approaches the oven from the left, assisted by Russian and Swedish generals. At the right, the British Duke of Wellington, whose armies pushed the French out of Spain, brings pies containing trophies of those victories. The Austrian emperor Francis I pretends the oven door is stuck. As Napoleon’s father-in-law, he had urged armistice but did eventually join the allies to support abdication.

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