The London Omnibus

The London Omnibus

Nadar

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Best known today as a pioneering photographer, Nadar worked as a caricaturist for almost twenty years, contributing to many of the major satirical magazines of his day. These two pairs of drawings, likely intended to be reproduced as wood engravings, contrast the harried experience of riding the omnibus "today" with idealized visions for what it will be like "tomorrow." Their humor is both specific to the nineteenth-century fascination with omnibus travel as an experience of urban modernity and universally understood by anyone who experiences the frustrations of a daily commute on mass-transit.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

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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.