A Seaman's Wife's Reckoning

Thomas Rowlandson

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

A young woman sits holding an infant and turns towards an elderly man beside her. Her sailor husband at right, rises from his chair and stares warily at his father. The old man, who wears a seaman's uniform, scowls towards his son, saying, "Why d'ye see I am an old Seaman and not easily imposed upon—I say that cant be my Son Jacks child why he has been married but three months and during that time he has been at sea—the thing is impossible you may as well tell me that my ship Nancy goes nine knots an hour in a dead calm, and now I look again its the very picture of Peter Wilkins the Soap Boiler." The woman says: "My dear Father-in Law, Ill make it out very easily—Jack has been married to me three months—very well—I have been with child three months—which makes six—then he has been to sea three months has not he?— and that just makes up the Nine!!" The husband says: "Father, Farther [sic],—dont be too hard upon Poll—I know something of the log book myself—and d—m me but she has kept her reckoning like a true Seamans wife."

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