A Brace of Public Guardians

Thomas Rowlandson

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Two images on one plate. At left, a judge declaims looking upward while a desperate man bribes a figure sitting at a table below. At right a night watchman goes on his rounds blindly with lantern and rattle, not seeing two burglars entering a house behind and an officer embracing a woman in a sentry box at right.

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