A Turkish Bath (Aubry de La Mottraye's "Travels throughout Europe, Asia and into Part of Africa...," London, 1724, vol. I, pl. 10)

A Turkish Bath (Aubry de La Mottraye's "Travels throughout Europe, Asia and into Part of Africa...," London, 1724, vol. I, pl. 10)

William Hogarth

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Hogarth made this print early in his career to illustrate a travel book by the French author Aubry de La Mottraye. The image of a woman bathing with the assistance of a servant derives from one in "Recueil de cent estampes représentant differéntes nations du Levant..." (A Collection of One Hundred Prints Representing Nations of the Levant, 1712-13). In that earlier publication plate 45, "La fille turque à qui l'on tresse les cheveux au bain" (Turkish girl having her hair dressed in a bath) was engraved by Jean Baptiste Haussard after Jean Baptiste Vanmour. Hogarth's print adapts Vanmour's figures to show the servant pouring water over her mistress, rather than arranging her hair, and adds a ceiling pierced with with round glass panes, an architectural feature that La Mottraye mentions seeing at a bathhouse at Tripoli.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

A Turkish Bath (Aubry de La Mottraye's "Travels throughout Europe, Asia and into Part of Africa...," London, 1724, vol. I, pl. 10)A Turkish Bath (Aubry de La Mottraye's "Travels throughout Europe, Asia and into Part of Africa...," London, 1724, vol. I, pl. 10)A Turkish Bath (Aubry de La Mottraye's "Travels throughout Europe, Asia and into Part of Africa...," London, 1724, vol. I, pl. 10)A Turkish Bath (Aubry de La Mottraye's "Travels throughout Europe, Asia and into Part of Africa...," London, 1724, vol. I, pl. 10)A Turkish Bath (Aubry de La Mottraye's "Travels throughout Europe, Asia and into Part of Africa...," London, 1724, vol. I, pl. 10)

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.