A Group of Vultures Waiting for the Storm to "Blow Over"–"Let Us Prey" (from "Harper's Weekly," vol. 15, p. 889)

Thomas Nast

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Widely considered to be one of the most important American satirists of the nineteenth century, Thomas Nast was the leading cartoonist at Harper’s Weekly from 1859 through 1886. An outspoken defender of principled politicians, Nast targeted leaders whom he deemed unethical through his biting illustrations. These works harnessed popular references that could be easily understood by a partially illiterate audience. The prototype of power broker William M. "Boss" Tweed as a corrupt fraudster became fixed in the American political imagination thanks to Nast’s series of illustrations published in Harper’s Weekly in the months leading up to the New York state election in 1871, which is credited with helping to sway the public to vote the Democrats out of power. Here, "Boss Tweed" and his associates are depicted as vultures feeding off the taxpayers of New York while waiting for their scandal to "blow over."

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