A Young Woman (Heiress) Prepares to Sign a Document

Thomas Rowlandson

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

A young and beautiful woman stands at left holding a quill pen, her wealth indicated by her fashionable dress, feathers in her hair and pendant earrings. To her right a lawyer stands behind a table with ink pots and holds up a document for her to sign. They are watched by an stout middle aged man at rights who wearing a military coat. The style of the dress sets the scene in the 1780s.

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