The Boston Massacre

Paul Revere Jr.

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Bostonian silversmith-engraver Revere made this print in response to a violent confrontation between local residents and British troops on March 5, 1770. With two thousand soldiers billeted in the city to enforce the collection of taxes on imported goods such as tea, tensions grew and skirmishes became commonplace. On the night in question, Americans threw stones and ice balls at a lone guard stationed outside the Custom House. Reinforcements were called, a tense standoff ensued, and rifles eventually fired. Crispus Attucks, a multiracial dockworker shown here in the foreground, was among the five fallen Americans. Issued on March 26, Revere’s image casts the British as instigators and callous executioners. Often copied and widely distributed, it helped push the colony toward revolution.

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