A Chiel Among Them (recto); Amusements for the Sea-side (verso) (Punch, or the London Charivari, September 20, 1873, pp. 113-14)

George Du Maurier

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This print came to the Museum inserted in an album of caricatures clipped from contemporary periodicals, assembled around 1873 by the artist and etcher Arthur Heseltine. Born in England, Heseltine lived for a time in Bourron-Marlotte, near the forest of Fountainebleau in France, and later in Glasgow. The album later belonged to William Lieberman, a curator at the Museum of Modern Art, and chairman of the Department of 20th Century Art at the Metropolitan Museum.

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