Ship Owners and Merchant Tug Boat Company

Emmanuel Wyttenbach

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Chromolithographs became common a decade or so after the end of the Civil War and commercial advertising encouraged the expansion of the technique. This small-scale poster printed by one of the earliest and most successful San Francisco publishers promotes the Ship Owners & Merchants Tug Boat Company, featuring the firm’s capabilities, the names of its acting directors, and its boats with their trademark red funnel with black tops.

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