The March of Morality

William Heath ('Paul Pry')

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This satire, set outside Thomas McLean's London printshop, shows a beadle dressed in a braid trimmed hat and greatcoat. Flourishing a cane, he walks along a sidewalk followed by two women who wear very large hats and low cut dresses. Three ragged salesmen hastily drape nude statues while the shop window behind displays colored caricatures of nudes including the Hottentot Venus and Achilles in Hyde Park. At right signs are lettered "Coffee Shop Beds," "Religious Tract Society / Cant" and "Dr. Eady / Church St Sch." and "Just published by Stockdale, St. James's Square"

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