Waddling In!

Thomas Rowlandson

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This print was issued as a pair with Waddling Out! (59.533.626) and belongs to a series that Woodward centered on city businessmen. Here, a portly man heads into the stock exchange (identified by lettering over the door), with posters at right advertizing "New Loan Omnium" and the "Irish Lottery." A building in the background houses "Hazard and Goodluck's Lottery Office," and a man whose hat is lettered "Great News" blows a trumpet. The image suggests an environment that encourages investors to borrow.

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