Disloyal British "Subject"

Currier & Ives

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This satire responds to a recruitment campaign aimed a foreign sallors that the United States Navy mounted during the American Civil War. We see an Irishman who is tempted to sign up being warned off by John Bull–a rotund embodiment of England–who tells him that he will lose British protection. The figures stand near a wharf with ships moored in the distance below a large American flag. Competing posters on the wall read: "The Union For Ever, U.S., Down with Secession, Death to Traitors, Volunteers Wanted For the U.S. Navy" and " Victoria R., The Belligerents, Strict Neutrality, Blockade, British Interests, Privateering, Letters of Marque." John Bull holds a scroll lettered "V. R. Proclamation, Foreign Enlistees."

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