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

Pierre Nolasque Bergeret

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This pen lithograph describes a crowd of potential customers jostling one another outside Aaron Martinet's printshop on the rue du Coq-Saint-Honoré (now rue Marengo) behind the Louvre in Paris. As an engraver and publisher, Martinet was known for both social and political satire, operating a family business founded in the 18th century. Known for issuing colored etchings and aquatints, this print demonstrates his innovative experimentation as a publisher in the recently invented medium of lithography.

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