Dinner in Celebration of the Emancipation of Holland from France, City of London Tavern, Bishopsgate, December 14, 1813

Dinner in Celebration of the Emancipation of Holland from France, City of London Tavern, Bishopsgate, December 14, 1813

Thomas Rowlandson

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Men at long tables in a large room, stand with glasses raised for a toast. Two lage flags hang at the far end of the hall. This large gathering room had been rebuilt after a fire in 1765, the new building designed by William Jupp the elder and opened in September 1768.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Dinner in Celebration of the Emancipation of Holland from France, City of London Tavern, Bishopsgate, December 14, 1813Dinner in Celebration of the Emancipation of Holland from France, City of London Tavern, Bishopsgate, December 14, 1813Dinner in Celebration of the Emancipation of Holland from France, City of London Tavern, Bishopsgate, December 14, 1813Dinner in Celebration of the Emancipation of Holland from France, City of London Tavern, Bishopsgate, December 14, 1813Dinner in Celebration of the Emancipation of Holland from France, City of London Tavern, Bishopsgate, December 14, 1813

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.