All the Talents

Thomas Rowlandson

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Created as a frontispiece to a satirical poem, Rowlandson's etching is based on a drawing by Barrett, the author. The satire responds to the recent fall of a British parliamentary coalition known as the "Broad Bottom Administration," or "All the Talents." Its diverse membership is symbolized by a creature with the head and tail of a monkey, but human body, wearing a judge's wig beneath the mitre of an episcopal bishop and holding a Catholic crosier. Its suit mixes a lawyer's bands with a laced coat, ragged breeches, single shoe, and a French jackboot. The burning papers below refer to the Administration's negotiations with France, and its lost sinecures and patronages. A musket labeled "Army," fired with its right foot, causes volumes labeled "Magna Charta" and "Coronation Oath" to fall from a shelf. With a quill, the animal points to new financial projects, the slip of paper "Country dances" below alluding to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Lord Henry Petty's love of dancing. Finally, smoke, from the pipe obscures a portrait of William Pitt, whose principles the coalition supposedly honored.

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