Philip King of Mount Hope

Paul Revere Jr.

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Early New Englanders knew the Native American chief Metacomet as King Philip. Leading the Wampanoag people around Narragansett Bay, he responded aggressively when the Massachusetts and Plymouth colonies repeatedly broke treaties with the local tribes and expanded westward. "King Philip’s War" broke out in June 1675, with raids and battles fought from the Connecticut River Valley north into Maine. When a truce was made in April 1678, the Native population had been reduced by more than half and rendered effectively landless. Many colonial settlements suffered great damage, with adult male numbers decimated, the economy ruined, and the western frontier pushed back by miles. A century later, Revere produced this portrait of Metacomet to illustrate a history that glossed over the war’s true costs.

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