Plate 41: Robert Macaire, architect, from 'Caricaturana,' published in Les Robert Macaires

Plate 41: Robert Macaire, architect, from 'Caricaturana,' published in Les Robert Macaires

Honoré Daumier

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

- How's that, Mr. Macaire? This house, which according to your estimate should only have cost me 70,000 Fr, will now cost me more than three hundred thousand! - What can I say? It's not my fault! You had a casement window which we should have opened up in the north wall cut through the south wall, you only want four floors instead of five and what is more, whereas we should have roofed in zinc you now want us to roof only in slate! I can only reply that you have changed my project and that's your affair.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Plate 41: Robert Macaire, architect, from 'Caricaturana,' published in Les Robert MacairesPlate 41: Robert Macaire, architect, from 'Caricaturana,' published in Les Robert MacairesPlate 41: Robert Macaire, architect, from 'Caricaturana,' published in Les Robert MacairesPlate 41: Robert Macaire, architect, from 'Caricaturana,' published in Les Robert MacairesPlate 41: Robert Macaire, architect, from 'Caricaturana,' published in Les Robert Macaires

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.