Six Stages of Mending a Face, Dedicated with respect to the Right Hon-ble. Lady Archer

Thomas Rowlandson

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Rowlandson mocks the extreme measures that an aging socialite pursues to appear young and beautiful. She is shown unadorned at upper right–bald, toothless, half-blind and with fallen breasts–then progressively “mends” herself by inserting a false eye and teeth, putting on a long curled wig, and transforming her face and arms with cosmetics. Fashionable clothes and jewelry, and rouge applied with a rabbit’s foot, complete the illusion, until she is ready to attend a masquerade. Lady Sarah Archer, evoked in the print’s dedication, was often mocked by caricaturists for her heavy use of cosmetics. In the eighteenth century make-up was popular among upper class women but also was much criticized. Since face paint and rouge often contain high levels of lead, they could be dangerous, and their users were condemned for sacrificing health to vanity.

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