Portfolio Cover for a Collection of Caricatures and Satires

Anonymous, British, 19th century

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This portfolio cover, likely made by an amateur collector, consists of boards covered with ornamental paper (green printed with a black foliage pattern), with the top board decorated with a hand-colored lithograph that shows Prince Albert driving Queen Victoria and three of their children in an open carriage. The prince wears a garter star on his coat, and the queen and children have ermine edged coats. The couple's first three children were Victoria (b. 1840), Edward (b. 1841), and Alice (b. 1843).

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