The Old Womans Complaint, or the Greek Alphabet

The Old Womans Complaint, or the Greek Alphabet

Thomas Rowlandson

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

An elderly schoolmaster sits at left addressing an old countrywoman who faces him. Four boys stand behind her. The schoolmaster says: "Good woman you are always making complaints against my Scholars, what have they done to offend you now?" She answers: "Please your Honors Worship they followd me up and down—and said one to another—At her!—beat her! damn her!—pelt her!— and a great deal more that I do not recollect." The leader of the boys bows and says: "Indeed Sir, we were only repeating our Greek Alphabet, in order to get quite perfect—what the Old Woman heard was only Alpha—Beta— Gamma—Delta—and so on to the conclusion."

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Old Womans Complaint, or the Greek AlphabetThe Old Womans Complaint, or the Greek AlphabetThe Old Womans Complaint, or the Greek AlphabetThe Old Womans Complaint, or the Greek AlphabetThe Old Womans Complaint, or the Greek Alphabet

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.