A room within the Robert Lehman Collection at The Met with red walls displays framed Renaissance religious paintings, a dark ornate chest, and wooden furniture.

The Robert Lehman Collection

About Us

The Robert Lehman Collection is one of the most distinguished privately assembled art collections in the United States. Robert Lehman's bequest to The Met, a collection of extraordinary quality and breadth acquired over the course of sixty years, is a remarkable example of twentieth-century American collecting. Spanning seven hundred years of western European art, from the fourteenth to the twentieth centuries, the 2,600 works include paintings, drawings, manuscript illumination, sculpture, glass, textiles, antique frames, maiolica, enamels, and precious jeweled objects.

The collection of approximately three hundred paintings is particularly rich in the field of the Italian Renaissance, notably the Sienese school, as well as early Northern European works. Included in the 750 Old Master drawings ranging from the fifteenth to the twentieth centuries is a significant group of eighteenth-century Venetian works, as well as other distinguished Italian, French, and Northern European examples. The collection is also renowned in several areas of decorative arts: Renaissance maiolica, Venetian glass, and antique frames.

Our History

Robert Lehman's parents, Philip and Carrie Lehman, laid the foundation for the collection around 1905, when they began acquiring works of art for their recently completed townhouse on West 54th Street in New York City. Robert Lehman assembled his collection with scholarly knowledge, astute connoisseurship, and skillful negotiation of the art market. Upon his death in 1969, he bequeathed 2,600 works to The Met with the stipulation that they be exhibited as a private collection, reflecting his belief that "important works of art, privately owned, should be beyond one's own private enjoyment and [that] the public at large should be afforded some means of seeing them." A new wing, erected to display the collection, opened to the public in 1975. The Robert Lehman Wing includes a central skylit gallery surrounded by a series of rooms intended to recreate the Lehman family residence. Velvet wall coverings, draperies, furniture, and rugs evoke the ambience of private interiors and serve as a backdrop for this extraordinary collection.

Read more about the history of the collection (PDF).


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Study for the Equestrian Monument to Francesco Sforza, Antonio Pollaiuolo  Italian, Pen and brown ink, light and dark brown wash; outlines of the horse and rider pricked for transfer.
Antonio Pollaiuolo
early to mid 1480s
Ecstatic Christ, Hans Baldung (called Hans Baldung Grien)  German, Pen and two shades of carbon black ink, traces of black chalk underdrawing
Hans Baldung (called Hans Baldung Grien)
ca. 1510–11
A Goldsmith in his Shop, Petrus Christus  Netherlandish, Oil on oak panel
Petrus Christus
1449
The Annunciation, Hans Memling  Netherlandish, Oil on panel, transferred to canvas
Hans Memling
1480–89
Young Girl Bathing, Auguste Renoir  French, Oil on canvas
Auguste Renoir
1892
Bust of a Man in a Hat Gazing Upward, Martin Schongauer  German, Pen and carbon black ink, over pen and brown ink, on paper prepared with sanguine wash.
Martin Schongauer
ca. 1480–90
Study for "Poseuses", Georges Seurat  French, Conté crayon on laid paper.
Georges Seurat
1886–87
Tabernacle House Altar with the Adoration of the Shepherds, the Adoration of the Magi, and the Annunciation., Reinhold Vasters (frame) German, Ebony-veneered soft wood, silver gilt, rock crystal, agate, and reverse painted and gilded glass.
Reinhold Vasters
Italian
second half 16th century (panels); ca. 1865–90 (frame)
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