View of Lambeth from Whitehall Stairs [copy]

Wenceslaus Hollar

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Lambeth, now part of South London, is seen from Whitehall Stairs with Lambeth Palace in distance on the left. The right foreground is filled with a range of gabled buildings. A two-storied wing is shown at center, extending over the foreshore on piers and ending in a door and a flight of steps down to the water. Before this convenience, Whitehall Stairs consisted of a plank walkway which ferry boats used to deposit passngers. This is a copy after Hollar in the same direction as his original.

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.