Procession of the Cod Company from St. Giles's to Billingsgate

Procession of the Cod Company from St. Giles's to Billingsgate

Thomas Rowlandson

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Seven hefty women approach a pier with baskets on their heads, two of them smoking pipes. An eighth woman sits at left, also smoking a pipe, with baskets of cod and lobsters next to her.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Procession of the Cod Company from St. Giles's to BillingsgateProcession of the Cod Company from St. Giles's to BillingsgateProcession of the Cod Company from St. Giles's to BillingsgateProcession of the Cod Company from St. Giles's to BillingsgateProcession of the Cod Company from St. Giles's to Billingsgate

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.