Schoolboys Giving Charity to a Blind Man

John Raphael Smith

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Bigg was a Royal Academician who often depicted charity performed by children. This mezzotint reproduces a work he exhibited in 1780 and shows boys responding to a blind man. The latter’s red coat identifies him as a former soldier, perhaps a veteran of the American Revolutionary War. Little state support was available to needy Britons at this date and the children’s empathy highlights that problem. After reading the blind man’s sign, the boys share what they can—one reaches into a basket, another his pocket. This genre image recalls the plight of the sixth-century Roman general Belisarius, who after being blinded at the order of Emperor Justinian I, was reduced to begging for alms. A proof of the print was shown at the Society of Artists in 1782.

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