Oliver Goldsmith

Henry William Bunbury

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This caricature of Goldsmith, the novelist, playwright and poet, was designed and likely etched by his friend Henry William Bunbury (an inscription by Horace Walpole next to an impression that he owned, ascribes both roles to the artist). As the younger son of Sir William Bunbury, 5th baronet, the artist's income came mostly from a position as equerry to the Duke of York. Bunbury made a few early etchings around 1770, then relied on professional etchers to transform his drawings into prints, with examples published into the nineteenth century.

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