The Sliver Age

John Raphael Smith

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Based on a painting by Henry Walton, this print was published as a companion to Benjamin West’s "The Golden Age" (47.100.487). The two titles evoke early periods of human society described by ancient authors such as Hesiod and Ovid. Peace had prevailed in the preceding Golden Age when humans needed to do little work and mingled freely with the Olympian gods. But, in the following Silver Age, strife dominated society and labor became necessary for survival. As translated into eighteenth-century England, that decline is embodied by a weary market girl who has set down her heavy basket of chickens. Smith’s title alerts us to the underlying moral message that criticizes child labor.

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