The Village School, from "Illustrated London News"

The Village School, from "Illustrated London News"

Alfred Rankley

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

An elderly woman teaches children near an open hearth (an example of the "dame schools" that offered poor British children rudimentary education in the 19th century). In the 1850s Rankley turned from exhibiting elevated literary subjects to focus on genre themes centered on children and education. The painting on which this print is based was shown at the Royal Academy of Arts, London in 1856 and the wood engraving appeared in the "Illustrated London News" shortly afterward.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Village School, from "Illustrated London News"The Village School, from "Illustrated London News"The Village School, from "Illustrated London News"The Village School, from "Illustrated London News"The Village School, from "Illustrated London News"

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.