Plate 28: Conscript replacement agency, from 'Caricaturana,' published in Les Robert Macaires

Plate 28: Conscript replacement agency, from 'Caricaturana,' published in Les Robert Macaires

Honoré Daumier

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

-There's merchandise an' merchandise! You wan' a common replacement, that'll cost yer only 800 F., but I warn yer, they're all swindlers, crooks who don't stay with their regiment, who skedaddle at the first opportunity and who 'ave ter be retrieved.... Would yer like ter make it 1'500 F., take that speciment, it ain't handsome but it's of good composition and it's got papers... As many as yer like an' it don't flinch from six years' service. - Bertrand (aside): You c'n count on it, civilian!"

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Plate 28: Conscript replacement agency, from 'Caricaturana,' published in Les Robert MacairesPlate 28: Conscript replacement agency, from 'Caricaturana,' published in Les Robert MacairesPlate 28: Conscript replacement agency, from 'Caricaturana,' published in Les Robert MacairesPlate 28: Conscript replacement agency, from 'Caricaturana,' published in Les Robert MacairesPlate 28: Conscript replacement agency, 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.