The Toilet of a Modern Belle: Inflating a Lady

William Heath ('Paul Pry')

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

In this fashion caricature a young woman's maid inflates her sleeve. This imitates a series of prints thet Heath devoted to female dress, focusing on huge feathered hats and puffed sleeves. From 1827–29 Heath used the image of a little dandy holding an umbrella to sign prints, seen here at lower left, a reference to Paul Pry, a nosy character in an 1825 play by John Poole.

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