Italian Picture Dealers Humbugging My Lord Anglaise

Thomas Rowlandson

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

A handsome English lord visiting Italy is introduced to a disreputable art dealer by an obese nobleman. The grimaces and gestures of the Italians suggest that they intend to defraud, or "humbug," the tourist. A voluptuous Mary Magdalene, purportedly by Guido Reni, is propped on a table for inspection and all the works on display undoubtedly are copies. When this print was published in 1812, Britain and France had been at war for two decades and Englishmen could not visit Italy. A partially erased date of 1806 in the lower right corner indicates that Rowlandson conceived the image when southern Italy remained accessible but issued it at a time when making a Grand Tour had become a nostalgic memory.

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