A Visit to the Doctor

Thomas Rowlandson

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Republished state (watermarked 1817 and "Pub'd" has been erased). An elderly doctor at right, receives two patients. The man asks the doctor, "Do you see Doctor my Dame and I become [sic] to ax your advice—we both of us eat well, and drink well, and sleep well—yet still we be somehow queerish" and the doctor responds, "You eat well—you drink well and you sleep well—very good— You was perfectly right in coming to me, for depend upon it I will give you something that shall do away all these things."

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