Pussy's Perquisite, from "Illustrated London News" Christmas Number

Richard Brend'amour

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

For its Christmas issue in 1882, the "Illustrated London News" chose a print devoted to the ever popular theme of children and pets, publishing Schütze's image of a girl dressed in 18th-century finery who pours milk or cream into a porcelain saucer for an expectant cat. The image echoes genre precedents by Joseph Wright of Derby, but the approach to historical revival—at once playful and sentimental—is distinctly Victorian. The title refers to the expectation of servants in wealthy households of a right to rich food not consumed at feasts. The German printmaker Brend'amour had founded a wood engraving firm in Düsseldorf and also worked for London publishers.

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