Art, literature & history
The Sad Discovery, or The Graceless Apprentice
1785
- Dating
- Exact year
- Held at
- National Gallery of Art
- Medium
- hand-colored etching
- Dimensions
- sheet: 20.1 × 28.1 cm (7 15/16 × 11 1/16 in.)
- Collection no.
- 1945.5.220
- Attribution
- By the artist
- Image rights
- CC0 1.0License details
Thomas Rowlandson. The Sad Discovery, or The Graceless Apprentice. Thomas Rowlandson; This file was donated to Wikimedia Commons as part of a project by the National Gallery of Art . Please see the Gallery's Open Access Policy .. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Thomas_Rowlandson,_The_Sad_Discovery,_or_The_Graceless_Apprentice,_1785,_NGA_30997.jpg. CC0 (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/). Full-frame proportional resize and JPEG compression.
Collection: National Gallery of Art
About this artwork
The Sad Discovery, or The Graceless Apprentice — Thomas Rowlandson. 1785.
Medium: hand-colored etching.
Dimensions (museum labels retained): sheet: 20.1 × 28.1 cm (7 15/16 × 11 1/16 in.) .
Collection: National Gallery of Art, Washington. Accession 1945.5.220. Rosenwald Collection.
Museum holding does not establish current display.
Source: National Gallery of Art, CC0 collection metadata, retrieved 9 September 2026.
Location checked Sep 9, 2026. This does not indicate whether the work is on display.