The Tea-Tax-Tempest (The Oracle)

John Dixon

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This allegorical scene captures a British artist’s response to the American Revolution. Father Time, at left, holds up a magic lantern (an early image projector) to reveal a view of the destruction of Britain with heraldic leopards fighting. America sits in the shadows, at right, wearing products from her realm: a string of pearls, a feathered headdress, and an animal-skin wrap. Her physical separation from her companions, representing Europe, Asia, and Africa, suggests the impending imperial rupture. Using gouache paint, an unknown artist altered Dixon’s original mezzotint print, which depicts a hopeful resolution to the conflict, to reveal anxiety about the outcome.

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