The Hall, Blue Coat School

The Hall, Blue Coat School

Thomas Rowlandson

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Edward VI founded the first bluecoat school in 1552 and it was housed in Christ's Hospital, Greyfriars, Newgate Street, London. A charitable institution, it educated poor children and, by the eighteenth-century sixty schools following this model existed in other parts of England. The students wear a distinctive blue uniform, a color associated with charity, paired with yellow stockings with white bands. Two here address assembled supporters and masters in an impressive hall. Buildings opposite St. Paul's Cathedral were destroyed in the Fire of London in 1666, and then rebuilt to designs by Sir Christopher Wren. Shown in this print, they survived until bombed during the Second World War. Today, the school has moved to West Sussex and is supported by a charitable foundation.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

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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.