School for Gallantry

Thomas Rowlandson

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

In this fifth print of a group of eight, a blue-uniformed suitor discovers his lady-love sleeping in the arms of a red-coated rival. Scattered instruments and a monkey wearing the dozing officer's hat and holding his whip, indicate that frenzied dancing has taken place, while Rousseau's "Eloise" ("Julie, or the New Heloise") lying open on the floor points to illicit passion. Rowlandson etched this set after drawings by Willyams, a university-educated lieutenant-colonel from Cornwall who also supplied supporting satirical text under the pseudonym Joel McCringer. Rowlandson's characteristic elegance does not disguise the dark human impulses being satirized. Modern education, it is suggested, does little to teach self-control, wisdom or empathy.

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