Les Musards de la Rue du Coq à Paris (Dawdlers of the Rue Coq)

Thomas Rowlandson

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

A crowd has gathered outside "Martinet Librairie," a popular printshop at no. 124 rue du Coq-Saint-Honoré in Paris, trying to view both the images in the window and one another. Attributed to Rowlandson, the etching is based on a pen lithograph by the French artist Bergeret that Aaron Martinet published in 1805 (see 1984.1026.1). The underlying humor contrasts English tourists with more sophisticated Parisians, and would have appealed to Rowlandson, who visited France often and been raised by an aunt of Hugenot descent. The English origins of this print are affirmed by the insertion of the name of Thomas Tegg, a London publisher, on a poster at upper left.

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