Transplanting of Teeth

Thomas Rowlandson

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Dentists extract teeth from poor people and insert them into the jaws of well-to-do patients. At center, a young chimney-sweep is about to have a tooth pulled, and a lady next to him has just endured an extraction and is about to receive a transplantation. At right a good-looking young lady clenches her fists as a spectacled dentist places his instrument in her mouth. Behind the group a man in uniform inspects his mouth with a mirror and at left, a ragged boy and girl leave the room in pain, with the girl holding a coin.

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