Quarter Day, or Clearing the Premises without Consulting Your Landlord

Quarter Day, or Clearing the Premises without Consulting Your Landlord

Thomas Rowlandson

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Household goods and furniture are being piled into an open cart. A muscular man stands inside it, taking things from a woman at right. A girl at left left brings two cages with a mouse and a bird. A pretty young woman is in the doorway. Two children play with a large cat in the foreground.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Quarter Day, or Clearing the Premises without Consulting Your LandlordQuarter Day, or Clearing the Premises without Consulting Your LandlordQuarter Day, or Clearing the Premises without Consulting Your LandlordQuarter Day, or Clearing the Premises without Consulting Your LandlordQuarter Day, or Clearing the Premises without Consulting Your Landlord

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.