Salt Water and Fresh Water

Thomas Rowlandson

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Two scenes on one plate. In the top scene a hefty nude woman is helped frin a bathing maching into the water a younger nude woman and older dressed woman. Within the enclosure there are two partially clothed women. In the background there is a second bathing machine with a nude woman shown falling into the water but held around the waist by another figure. In the bottom scene, within an interior by an open fireplace, a hefty nude man falls back in a wooden tub as he is scrubbed by an older woman. At left a young woman pours in hot water from a kettle onto the man.

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