The College Gate

Thomas Rowlandson

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Three men ride off in different directions after coming through a gate with square brick pillars surmounted by stone vases. Behind the left rider walks a fat divine wearing an academic cap. Through the gateway we see a short fat man in a clerical wig standing on a mounting block as a groom approaches with his horse. The prints reduces an earlier etching by Rowlandson after Bunbury (59.533.1861).

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