The Return from the Continent, or the Family Puzzled

The Return from the Continent, or the Family Puzzled

John Phillips

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This print satirizes French fashion by showing a stout middle class Englishman returned from Paris. As a seated lady pours tea, she misses the cup and remarks on the transformed appearance of her husband, "Lord, my dear! the French folks have quite transmogrify'd you. What, is that a French collar? why, it sticks out like two large horns; and they've stuck a sugar-loaf on your head—and what have they been doing with your small cloaths? and where's your wig, my dear? He answers, "O! all a mode! all a mode!" Their daughter says, 'All a mode! all a mode! Why, Papa, you seem to have forgot all your English. You'll have all the customers take you for a French Mounseer." A clipped poodle stands at left and the ladies wear dresses with huge gigot sleeves and bold prints representing English fashion.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Return from the Continent, or the Family PuzzledThe Return from the Continent, or the Family PuzzledThe Return from the Continent, or the Family PuzzledThe Return from the Continent, or the Family PuzzledThe Return from the Continent, or the Family Puzzled

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.