Four Scenes: How to Stop your Horse at Pleasure; Geoffrey Gombado Esq-r.; How to Ride up Hyde Park; A Bit of Blood

Henry William Bunbury

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Four small scenes make gentle fun of various aspects of riding. In "How to Stop Your Horse at pleasure," a man rides full tilt into a barn and places his feet on the door frame. In "Geoffrey Gombado" (as pseudonym used by the artist Bunbury), a gouty man sits by a table grumpily holding a crutch while eyeing his boots. In "How to Ride up Hyde Park," a man gallops to the left and turns his head to grin at the viewer. Finally, in "A Bit of Blood, " a man in a red coat and carrying a cudgel and rides near a signpost lettered "The Bridle Way. Horselydown," with a coastal view at right.

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