The Sleeping Congregation

William Hogarth

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

A congregation dozes during a church service as the clergyman reads from the gospel and his clerk, sitting below the pulpit, eyes the exposed bosom of a young woman. The preacher was intended by Hogarth to satirize his contemporary John Theophilus Desaguliers. Originally published in October 1736, Hogarth here republished the print in 1762, adding elements such as two warts on the reader's face and cracks in the wall on which the angel is painted.

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