Box Lobby Loungers

Box Lobby Loungers

Thomas Rowlandson

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

A reissue of print first published 1786. A crowded room next to a theater, which is glimpsed through two open doors at right. Courtesans and ladies are being inspected by loungers, including Colonel George Hanger (later Lord Coleraine) with a club under his arm (his "Supple Jack"). Hanger looks at two attractive courtesans and fails to notice a pickpocket taking the seals from his fob. At right two more fashionably dressed women attract elderly admirers. Two sea captains regard a short elderly beau with contempt. Other figures include two "Don Juans", and a woman who sells oranges and programs and acts as a bawd. A playbill reads: "Theatre Royal Covent Garden / The Way of the World / Who's the Dupe."

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

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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.