How to turn any Horse, Mare, or Gelding; How to Ride genteel & agreeable down Hill; A Bit of Blood; How to be run away with; How to loose your way; One way to Stop your Horse
Thomas Rowlandson
An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art
Six small vignettes make fun of difficulties experienced by riders. 1: A rider walks his mount next to a wooden fence and holds a whip that dangles in front of the horse's nose. 2: A stocky rider on a pony plods down a track, gripping the reins, his tail coat flying behind. 3: A sporting cove wearing a wide brimmed hat and square tailed riding coat and holding a club, caters past a signpost lettered "The Bridle Way / Charsely Down". He turns his face towards the viewer. 4: A terrified rider leans far back struggling to control his runaway mount which leaps over an upturned wheelbarrow and a fallen woman. Behind another rider clings to a bucking mount. 5: A rider plods through wind and rain, his hat across his face preventing him from seeing a signpost that directs towards Oxford in one direction and London in another. 6: A stumpy rider in hat, tailcoat and top boots leans back in his saddle, waves his stick and tries to rein in his mount, a shaggy pony that heads towards a stage coach. Some of these scenes were developed to illustrate "Academy for Grown Horsemen, and Annals of Horsemanship" (1808), a book by Geoffrey Gambado (a pseudonum for Bunbury).
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.