Gallery of Fashion, vol. VI: April 1 1799 - March 1 1800

Nicolaus Heideloff

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Volume of costume plates from the series "Gallery of Fashion", published monthly by Nicolaus Heideloff between 1794 and 1803. Heideloff was born in Stuttgart, and spent the early years of his career in Paris. He fled from there to London during the French Revolution, and spent the next 30 years there. During this time he contributed to the growing market in popular prints through various endeavors including the Gallery of Fashion. In 1815, he was appointed to the directorship of the national paintings gallery in The Hague, now commonly known as the Mauritshuis.

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