Doncaster Fair or the Industrious Yorkshirebites

Doncaster Fair or the Industrious Yorkshirebites

Thomas Rowlandson

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

A couple prepares to play a game of throwing sticks at objects on pegs before them. The woman holds a bundle of sticks and extends her palm to a man to her right. Behind them at left another customer prepares to play the game. A man at right stands behinds his pegs and holds a bundle of sticks, extending one to the second customer.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Doncaster Fair or the Industrious YorkshirebitesDoncaster Fair or the Industrious YorkshirebitesDoncaster Fair or the Industrious YorkshirebitesDoncaster Fair or the Industrious YorkshirebitesDoncaster Fair or the Industrious Yorkshirebites

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.