Innocence and Experience: Selections from the Department of Drawings and Prints

This important drawing is related to one of Siena’s most famous monuments, the marble fountain known as the Fonte Gaia (now disassembled). Commissioned from the local sculptor Jacopo della Quercia in 1408, the work was a major artistic undertaking and the crowning feature of the advanced network of subterranean aqueducts that brought public waters to the heart of the city, a marvel of hydraulic engineering. For this emblem of civic pride, Jacopo conceived a large rectangular basin adorned with figural sculptures celebrating the ideals of Siena’s republican government, including allegories of Christian virtues and allusions to the city’s mythical Roman origins. The present sheet was probably made when designs for the fountain were revised in 1415–16, allowing Jacopo’s patrons, the magistrates of Siena, to assess the state of the project, which was finally completed in 1419.

This unfinished sheet by Lorenzo Monaco, a preeminent artist in early fifteenth-century Florence, was intended for the magnificent choir books of the monastery of Santa Maria degli Angeli. Executed on vellum (finely prepared animal skin), the delicate composition is the underdrawing of an illumination that would have been painted in tempera and gold. The foliate design forms a capital "D," the first letter in the text for the sung liturgy of the Mass for Palm Sunday; the opening notes of the music appear at upper right. Within the initial, Lorenzo drew a scene of Christ and the Apostles entering the Temple in Jerusalem. In contrast to the crisply delineated ornamental motifs, the narrative scene is modeled with subtle applications of wash, evoking volume and depth. The page offers a glimpse into Lorenzo’s artistic process at a time when most preparatory designs were completed directly on the surface of the final work.

The early fifteenth-century painter Parri Spinelli, like many others, looked to the authority of the great Florentine artist Giotto di Bondone for inspiration. This large drawing is a free copy after Giotto’s monumental mosaic (since destroyed) in the portico of Old Saint Peter’s Basilica in Rome, as the inscription on the side of the boat indicates. The scene represents a miracle described in the Gospel of Matthew in which Christ saves the Apostles from a storm at sea. Though Parri’s penwork is at times halting, revealing the cautious hand of a copyist, he also took creative liberties in his composition. For example, it appears he enlarged the figures of Christ and Saint Peter and brought them to the foreground. Here, in a momentary lapse of faith, Peter sinks into the water but is rescued by Christ’s hand. The sheet was part of a bound volume that Parri would have kept for reference in composing his own designs.

One of the earliest Italian drawings in The Met collection, this thin and fragile sheet once formed part of a late medieval model book. Such volumes contained repertories of carefully ordered motifs that could be studied and copied by members of a workshop, aiding in the instruction of young apprentices and ensuring a common style across hands. This page presents four principal figures in varying poses: a seated saint, a standing saint, the Virgin Mary cradling the Christ Child, and a figure who prays on one knee. Rather than invent new forms, artists could repurpose these exempla in compositions for works in other media, such as paintings. That the drawing has suffered significantly speaks to its use as an essential working tool and to the vicissitudes of collecting.

This sheet by a northern Italian draftsman is an extremely rare, early example of a drapery design made with the use of a mannequin, as indicated by the figure’s simplified anatomy, rigid disposition, and clumped hands. In the fifteenth century, the sculptor and theorist Filarete advised artists seeking to render draperies in a natural way to take a small wooden figure with jointed limbs and dress it in real cloth, as if it were a living person. He added that if the linen did not fall as desired, it could be wetted with melted glue and allowed to harden. As this practice became widespread, artists also used clay slip to set the fabric in place. In the present drawing, the ample folds of cloth, built up in layers of black chalk, ink, wash, and white gouache, bear a sculptural heft. The inscription "Ave vergine" (Hail Virgin) reveals that the study was intended for a figure of the Virgin Mary in a scene of the Annunciation.

Swift and agile pen strokes animate this brilliant drawing by Stefano da Verona, a leading painter and draftsman active in northern Italy. The highly unusual sheet is one of the earliest surviving examples of an exploratory sketch, in which the artist seems to experiment with ideas rather than copy an existing model. The aged, bearded man who holds a book, staff, and bell represents the hermit Saint Anthony Abbot. The female figure is likely a study for the Virgin of Humility, an iconographical type in which Mary sits humbly on the ground. Through his father, a French court painter, Stefano probably trained in the elegant, attenuated figural style of the French Gothic. His lithe penmanship, at once lyrical and frenetic, with its fluid hatching and open contours, further dematerializes the ethereal forms.

In this vivid imagining of the Resurrection, the risen Christ stands poised in the foreground, his right hand raised as if to bless the viewer. Behind him, four guards slumber around the empty tomb, unaware of the miracle that has occurred. Zoppo, an innovative painter and draftsman active in Padua, Venice, and Bologna, responded to artistic trends in northern Italy, among them the achievements of the sculptor Donatello, whose years in Padua overlapped with his own. In the drawing, Zoppo sharply defines Christ’s musculature and arranges the composition in shallow, compressed layers, akin to a sculptural relief. His dramatic handling of chiaroscuro and tonal effects, achieved with dark wash and white tempera on greenish-brown paper preparation, further evokes the appearance of a bronze sculpture. This highly finished sheet is not connected with any known painting by Zoppo and was probably an autonomous work made for a humanist collector.

As seen in this early study after life, the Florentine artist Filippino Lippi ranked among the superlative draftsmen in the medium of metalpoint on prepared paper. An unforgiving technique, metalpoint requires great care and expertise: lines formed by metallic deposits cannot be blended or erased, and their thickness and value are fixed. Despite these challenges, Filippino achieved sophisticated tonal range and volumetric definition through layered hatching and cross-hatching, and by illuminating forms with white gouache, which gleams against the pink of the prepared paper. The nude with arms behind his back is a study either for Saint Sebastian or for Christ in a scene of the Flagellation. Youthful studio assistants likely posed for this figure and for the seated man reading a book, as modeling was among their duties in the workshop.

This sheet is part of a dismembered sketchbook assembled by the sculptor Francesco di Simone Ferrucci and his Florentine workshop. A practical tool, the volume recorded a wide range of motifs, many copied after existing sculptures or sculptural designs. The figure of the kneeling Virgin Mary derives from a type developed by the artist’s celebrated contemporary Andrea del Verrocchio, with whom he sometimes collaborated. That Ferrucci drew this figure on several occasions in the same state of unfinish suggests that his source was a work of art, possibly a relief sculpture, that was itself incomplete. The pair of small female figures at left, allegories of Faith and Charity, and the nude child at top are closely related to Ferrucci’s own designs for altar tabernacles (Uffizi, Florence; V&A, London).

These sensitive renderings of a stag can be attributed to Stefano da Verona, a leading painter and draftsman in Lombardy and the Veneto. Another pen-and-ink drawing by his hand appears in this exhibition. In Stefano’s time, artists in northern Italy were known for their precise depictions of nature; the model books they produced featured highly finished animal studies with exacting attention to outward detail. Stefano’s nimble sketches of a stag stand in contrast to this tradition. With free and rapid strokes of the pen, he experiments with the immediate impression of the creature, imbuing it with a sense of vitality. The spontaneous handling, rhythmic hatching, and looped lines are among the characteristics these works share with the other sheet by Stefano in this selection.

These sensitive renderings of a stag can be attributed to Stefano da Verona, a leading painter and draftsman in Lombardy and the Veneto. Another pen-and-ink drawing by his hand appears in this exhibition. In Stefano’s time, artists in northern Italy were known for their precise depictions of nature; the model books they produced featured highly finished animal studies with exacting attention to outward detail. Stefano’s nimble sketches of a stag stand in contrast to this tradition. With free and rapid strokes of the pen, he experiments with the immediate impression of the creature, imbuing it with a sense of vitality. The spontaneous handling, rhythmic hatching, and looped lines are among the characteristics these works share with the other sheet by Stefano in this selection.

At first glance, this spirited confrontation between a winged dragon and a crouching lion may seem to be a product of the artist’s imagination. Yet the author of the work appears to have borrowed the composition from a well-known Florentine engraving of the 1460s (British Museum, London), which may itself have been modeled on a pattern book of animal poses. Descending from classical mythology and medieval allegory, fantastical creatures captivated Renaissance artists. The motif of the lion and dragon fighting was common in medieval bestiaries, moralizing manuscripts featuring real and fictional beasts. Though the draftsman derived the overall design from the print, he rendered the figures and landscape elements with greater naturalism and detail. The modeling of the forms with dense parallel and cross-hatching to create a sculptural chiaroscuro suggests that this is an early sixteenth-century work.

Andrea del Verrocchio devised a system of measurement adapted in part from the ancient writings of Vitruvius for this schematized rendering of a horse in profile. The letter "T" stands for "testa" (head), which is the unit by which the dimensions of the figure are calculated, each length inscribed by the artist in both numbers and words. The script, which traces the lines and contours from joint to joint, acquires a pictorial dimension, leading the eye around the horse’s frame. Verrocchio undertook this composition around the time that he won the prestigious commission in 1483 for the colossal bronze equestrian monument of Bartolomeo Colleoni in Venice. His innovative approach to proportional measurement was later taken up by his pupil Leonardo da Vinci in his early drawings of horses and the human body.

This view of a wooded slope on the bank of a river is an exceptionally rare example of a fifteenth-century landscape study. Perugino eschews linear penwork in favor of wash and white gouache, using the brush to draw forms that seem to dissolve into atmosphere and light. The eloquent passages of blank space call attention to the broad, watery brushstrokes with which the artist prepared the paper with a gray-green wash. The subtle texture of the preparation, together with the thin applications of brown wash in the design layer, gives the scene a vaporous softness. One of the most sought-after artists of his day, Perugino frequently included serene landscapes inspired by the Tuscan and Umbrian countrysides in the backgrounds of his paintings. A composition closely related to this one appears in the distance in his Vision of Saint Bernard (Alte Pinakothek, Munich).

A leading painter in early sixteenth-century Florence, Fra Bartolomeo was also a gifted and prolific draftsman. Among the vast number of surviving drawings by his hand is a remarkable group of independent landscape studies produced at a time when works of this genre were still uncommon. Achieved with clean strokes of the pen and considerable freedom and economy of line, the rural townscape gives the impression of having been observed from nature. Indeed, the artist frequently traveled the Tuscan countryside to sketch in the open air. Yet the sheet is not purely a study after life: certain details, such as the tall tower at right, closely recall an engraving by Albrecht Dürer, while the trees in the foreground are contrived as a frame for the scene beyond. Fra Bartolomeo adapted this composition for the background of a painting of the Nativity (Art Institute of Chicago).

Blake considered the Bible to be the supreme poetic work. In this image, he reimagines the Old Testament subject of Eve’s creation. Instead of showing the first woman emerging from Adam’s side, Blake presents the couple meeting with ceremonial solemnity. A divine figure prepares to join their hands while a recumbent Adam looks up eagerly as his mate steps down from blue-tinged clouds. Objects in the landscape elaborate the meaning: the grapevines entwined around the tree symbolize marriage, and the exotic red and blue plumed birds represent the newly created souls. A lion dozing near lambs at lower right signals the peace of the pre-fallen world. Blake made this finished watercolor for his loyal patron Thomas Butts.

This work comes from a series of eighty biblical watercolors that Blake made for Thomas Butts, an important patron. It depicts John, the author of the Book of Revelation, and his vision from the first line of chapter 10. The diminutive author, pen in hand, on the island of Patmos and gazes at a "mighty angel . . . clothed with a cloud . . . a rainbow was upon his head, and his face was as it were the sun, and his feet as pillars of fire." The artist based the angel's water-spanning stance on prints of the ancient Colossus of Rhodes and envisioned the seven thunders described in the text as horsemen riding through clouds.

Blake'w watercolor contrasts two groups of young women. Those at left hold full oil lamps and their luminous forms are arranged to resemble a classical low-relief sculpture, whereas their companions at right are agitated, dressed in dark clothing, and lack any source of light. The related parable in Matthew 25:1–4 urges spiritual preparedness: "Then shall the kingdom of heaven be likened unto ten virgins, which took their lamps, and went forth to meet the bridegroom. And five of them were wise, and five were foolish. They that were foolish took their lamps, and took no oil with them. But the wise took oil in their vessels with their lamps." A trumpeting angel flying overhead signifies that the moment of judgment has arrived.

This work was inspired by lines from Macbeth (act 1, scene 7), in which the title character imagines the aftermath of his intended murder of Duncan, the king:


"And pity, like a naked new-born babe,
Striding the blast, or heaven’s cherubin, hors’d 
Upon the sightless couriers of the air, 
Shall blow the horrid deed in every eye"


Here, Shakespeare’s similes are embodied to create a dynamic interplay where a baby springs from his mother towards an angel mounted on a blind steed. The artist inventively mixed relief etching with colors printed from millboard to produce this image, then used ink and watercolor to define details. Blake called prints like this one "frescoes" and considered them part of a greater narrative sequence.

A nude and aged Adam, newly aware of his own nakedness and mortality, hangs his head before a fiery chariot bearing the divine maker whom he resembles exactly. For many years, this image was thought to represent Elijah in the fiery chariot, but more recently has been connected to a passage in Genesis 3:17-19 in which God condemns Adam for tasting the forbidden fruit. The print was made using a unique method of Blake's invention. A plate etched in relief was employed to print the design; then colors were painted onto millboard, or a similar surface, and printed onto the sheet like a monotype. Finally, Blake enhanced the print by hand with watercolor and ink.

Blake etched twenty-seven printing plates for Songs of Innocence in 1789, completing those for the Songs of Experience in 1794. He then printed and hand-colored copies of the combined sets over succeeding decades as patrons ordered them, each one visually distinct. Verse and image work together to celebrate poetic inspiration and reveal aspects of the divine as expressed through nature. The poetic voice is often that of a child, whose emotions range from delight to fear, with darker feelings usually resolved in the earlier Songs of Innocence by adult intervention. This first group of Songs was shaped by the heady early days of the French Revolution, when British liberals and radicals believed that true reform was imminent on both sides of the Channel. By contrast, the tone of the later Songs is dark, even despairing. Children experience inexplicable cruelty at the hands of adults and the poet offers neither rescue nor resolution. These works were shaped by the later stages of the French Revolution, which was marked by regicide, the Terror, and repression of radical thinkers in Britain.

The artist Edward Calvert met Blake around 1825 and commissioned this copy of Songs of Innocence and of Experience soon thereafter. These richly decorated pages, with their deeply saturated hues and distinctive ornamental borders, reveal Blake’s late vision and the order is established by small red numbers at upper right. This copy of Songs was later the first work to be purchased by the Museum’s new Department of Prints in 1917, recommended by its distinguished curator William M. Ivins, Jr.

This frontispiece to Songs of Innocence illustrates Blake's "Introduction," a poem that casts the poet as a wandering piper inspired by the vision of a divine child:

Piping down the valleys wild,
Piping songs of pleasant glee,
On a cloud I saw a child,
And he laughing said to me

"Pipe a song about a Lamb!"
So I piped with merry cheer . . .

"Piper, sit thee down and write
In a book, that all may read."
So he vanished from my sight;
And I plucked a hollow reed,

And I made a rural pen,
And I stained the water clear,
And I wrote my happy songs
Every child may joy to hear.

Blake etched twenty-seven printing plates for Songs of Innocence in 1789, completing those for the Songs of Experience in 1794. He then printed and hand-colored copies of the combined sets over succeeding decades as patrons ordered them, each one visually distinct. Verse and image work together to celebrate poetic inspiration and reveal aspects of the divine as expressed through nature. The poetic voice is often that of a child, whose emotions range from delight to fear, with darker feelings usually resolved in the earlier Songs of Innocence by adult intervention. This first group of Songs was shaped by the heady early days of the French Revolution, when British liberals and radicals believed that true reform was imminent on both sides of the Channel.

The artist Edward Calvert met Blake around 1825 and commissioned this copy of Songs of Innocence and of Experience soon thereafter. These richly decorated pages, with their deeply saturated hues and distinctive ornamental borders, reveal Blake’s late vision and the order is established by small red numbers at upper right. This copy of Songs was later the first work to be purchased by the Museum’s new Department of Prints in 1917, recommended by its distinguished curator William M. Ivins, Jr.

Blake etched twenty-seven printing plates for Songs of Innocence in 1789, completing those for the Songs of Experience in 1794. He then printed and hand-colored copies of the combined sets over succeeding decades as patrons ordered them, each one visually distinct. Verse and image work together to celebrate poetic inspiration and reveal aspects of the divine as expressed through nature. The poetic voice is often that of a child, whose emotions range from delight to fear, with darker feelings usually resolved in the earlier Songs of Innocence by adult intervention. This first group of Songs was shaped by the heady early days of the French Revolution, when British liberals and radicals believed that true reform was imminent on both sides of the Channel.

The artist Edward Calvert met Blake around 1825 and commissioned this copy of Songs of Innocence and of Experience soon thereafter. These richly decorated pages, with their deeply saturated hues and distinctive ornamental borders, reveal Blake’s late vision and the order is established by small red numbers at upper right. This copy of Songs was later the first work to be purchased by the Museum’s new Department of Prints in 1917, recommended by its distinguished curator William M. Ivins, Jr.

Blake etched twenty-seven printing plates for Songs of Innocence in 1789, completing those for the Songs of Experience in 1794. He then printed and hand-colored copies of the combined sets over succeeding decades as patrons ordered them, each one visually distinct. Verse and image work together to celebrate poetic inspiration and reveal aspects of the divine as expressed through nature. The poetic voice is often that of a child, whose emotions range from delight to fear, with darker feelings usually resolved in the earlier Songs of Innocence by adult intervention. This first group of Songs was shaped by the heady early days of the French Revolution, when British liberals and radicals believed that true reform was imminent on both sides of the Channel.

The artist Edward Calvert met Blake around 1825 and commissioned this copy of Songs of Innocence and of Experience soon thereafter. These richly decorated pages, with their deeply saturated hues and distinctive ornamental borders, reveal Blake’s late vision and the order is established by small red numbers at upper right. This copy of Songs was later the first work to be purchased by the Museum’s new Department of Prints in 1917, recommended by its distinguished curator William M. Ivins, Jr.

Blake etched twenty-seven printing plates for Songs of Innocence in 1789, completing those for the Songs of Experience in 1794. He then printed and hand-colored copies of the combined sets over succeeding decades as patrons ordered them, each one visually distinct. Verse and image work together to celebrate poetic inspiration and reveal aspects of the divine as expressed through nature. The poetic voice is often that of a child, whose emotions range from delight to fear, with darker feelings usually resolved in the earlier Songs of Innocence by adult intervention. This first group of Songs was shaped by the heady early days of the French Revolution, when British liberals and radicals believed that true reform was imminent on both sides of the Channel.

The artist Edward Calvert met Blake around 1825 and commissioned this copy of Songs of Innocence and of Experience soon thereafter. These richly decorated pages, with their deeply saturated hues and distinctive ornamental borders, reveal Blake’s late vision and the order is established by small red numbers at upper right. This copy of Songs was later the first work to be purchased by the Museum’s new Department of Prints in 1917, recommended by its distinguished curator William M. Ivins, Jr.

Blake etched twenty-seven printing plates for Songs of Innocence in 1789, completing those for the Songs of Experience in 1794. He then printed and hand-colored copies of the combined sets over succeeding decades as patrons ordered them, each one visually distinct. Verse and image work together to celebrate poetic inspiration and reveal aspects of the divine as expressed through nature. The poetic voice is often that of a child, whose emotions range from delight to fear, with darker feelings usually resolved in the earlier Songs of Innocence by adult intervention. This first group of Songs was shaped by the heady early days of the French Revolution, when British liberals and radicals believed that true reform was imminent on both sides of the Channel.

The artist Edward Calvert met Blake around 1825 and commissioned this copy of Songs of Innocence and of Experience soon thereafter. These richly decorated pages, with their deeply saturated hues and distinctive ornamental borders, reveal Blake’s late vision and the order is established by small red numbers at upper right. This copy of Songs was later the first work to be purchased by the Museum’s new Department of Prints in 1917, recommended by its distinguished curator William M. Ivins, Jr.

Blake etched twenty-seven printing plates for Songs of Innocence in 1789, completing those for the Songs of Experience in 1794. He then printed and hand-colored copies of the combined sets over succeeding decades as patrons ordered them, each one visually distinct. Verse and image work together to celebrate poetic inspiration and reveal aspects of the divine as expressed through nature. The poetic voice is often that of a child, whose emotions range from delight to fear, with darker feelings usually resolved in the earlier Songs of Innocence by adult intervention. This first group of Songs was shaped by the heady early days of the French Revolution, when British liberals and radicals believed that true reform was imminent on both sides of the Channel.

The artist Edward Calvert met Blake around 1825 and commissioned this copy of Songs of Innocence and of Experience soon thereafter. These richly decorated pages, with their deeply saturated hues and distinctive ornamental borders, reveal Blake’s late vision and the order is established by small red numbers at upper right. This copy of Songs was later the first work to be purchased by the Museum’s new Department of Prints in 1917, recommended by its distinguished curator William M. Ivins, Jr.

Blake etched twenty-seven printing plates for Songs of Innocence in 1789, completing those for the Songs of Experience in 1794. He then printed and hand-colored copies of the combined sets over succeeding decades as patrons ordered them, each one visually distinct. Verse and image work together to celebrate poetic inspiration and reveal aspects of the divine as expressed through nature. The poetic voice is often that of a child, whose emotions range from delight to fear, with darker feelings usually resolved in the earlier Songs of Innocence by adult intervention. This first group of Songs was shaped by the heady early days of the French Revolution, when British liberals and radicals believed that true reform was imminent on both sides of the Channel.

The artist Edward Calvert met Blake around 1825 and commissioned this copy of Songs of Innocence and of Experience soon thereafter. These richly decorated pages, with their deeply saturated hues and distinctive ornamental borders, reveal Blake’s late vision and the order is established by small red numbers at upper right. This copy of Songs was later the first work to be purchased by the Museum’s new Department of Prints in 1917, recommended by its distinguished curator William M. Ivins, Jr.

Blake etched twenty-seven printing plates for Songs of Innocence in 1789, completing those for the Songs of Experience in 1794. He then printed and hand-colored copies of the combined sets over succeeding decades as patrons ordered them, each one visually distinct. Verse and image work together to celebrate poetic inspiration and reveal aspects of the divine as expressed through nature. The poetic voice is often that of a child, whose emotions range from delight to fear, with darker feelings usually resolved in the earlier Songs of Innocence by adult intervention. This first group of Songs was shaped by the heady early days of the French Revolution, when British liberals and radicals believed that true reform was imminent on both sides of the Channel.

The artist Edward Calvert met Blake around 1825 and commissioned this copy of Songs of Innocence and of Experience soon thereafter. These richly decorated pages, with their deeply saturated hues and distinctive ornamental borders, reveal Blake’s late vision and the order is established by small red numbers at upper right. This copy of Songs was later the first work to be purchased by the Museum’s new Department of Prints in 1917, recommended by its distinguished curator William M. Ivins, Jr.

Blake etched twenty-seven printing plates for Songs of Innocence in 1789, completing those for the Songs of Experience in 1794. He then printed and hand-colored copies of the combined sets over succeeding decades as patrons ordered them, each one visually distinct. Verse and image work together to celebrate poetic inspiration and reveal aspects of the divine as expressed through nature. The poetic voice is often that of a child, whose emotions range from delight to fear, with darker feelings usually resolved in the earlier Songs of Innocence by adult intervention. This first group of Songs was shaped by the heady early days of the French Revolution, when British liberals and radicals believed that true reform was imminent on both sides of the Channel.

The artist Edward Calvert met Blake around 1825 and commissioned this copy of Songs of Innocence and of Experience soon thereafter. These richly decorated pages, with their deeply saturated hues and distinctive ornamental borders, reveal Blake’s late vision and the order is established by small red numbers at upper right. This copy of Songs was later the first work to be purchased by the Museum’s new Department of Prints in 1917, recommended by its distinguished curator William M. Ivins, Jr.

Blake etched twenty-seven printing plates for Songs of Innocence in 1789, completing those for the Songs of Experience in 1794. He then printed and hand-colored copies of the combined sets over succeeding decades as patrons ordered them, each one visually distinct. Verse and image work together to celebrate poetic inspiration and reveal aspects of the divine as expressed through nature. The poetic voice is often that of a child, whose emotions range from delight to fear, with darker feelings usually resolved in the earlier Songs of Innocence by adult intervention. This first group of Songs was shaped by the heady early days of the French Revolution, when British liberals and radicals believed that true reform was imminent on both sides of the Channel.

The artist Edward Calvert met Blake around 1825 and commissioned this copy of Songs of Innocence and of Experience soon thereafter. These richly decorated pages, with their deeply saturated hues and distinctive ornamental borders, reveal Blake’s late vision and the order is established by small red numbers at upper right. This copy of Songs was later the first work to be purchased by the Museum’s new Department of Prints in 1917, recommended by its distinguished curator William M. Ivins, Jr.

Blake etched twenty-seven printing plates for Songs of Innocence in 1789, completing those for the Songs of Experience in 1794. He then printed and hand-colored copies of the combined sets over succeeding decades as patrons ordered them, each one visually distinct. Verse and image work together to celebrate poetic inspiration and reveal aspects of the divine as expressed through nature. The poetic voice is often that of a child, whose emotions range from delight to fear, with darker feelings usually resolved in the earlier Songs of Innocence by adult intervention. This first group of Songs was shaped by the heady early days of the French Revolution, when British liberals and radicals believed that true reform was imminent on both sides of the Channel.

The artist Edward Calvert met Blake around 1825 and commissioned this copy of Songs of Innocence and of Experience soon thereafter. These richly decorated pages, with their deeply saturated hues and distinctive ornamental borders, reveal Blake’s late vision and the order is established by small red numbers at upper right. This copy of Songs was later the first work to be purchased by the Museum’s new Department of Prints in 1917, recommended by its distinguished curator William M. Ivins, Jr.

Blake etched twenty-seven printing plates for Songs of Innocence in 1789, completing those for the Songs of Experience in 1794. He then printed and hand-colored copies of the combined sets over succeeding decades as patrons ordered them, each one visually distinct. Verse and image work together to celebrate poetic inspiration and reveal aspects of the divine as expressed through nature. The poetic voice is often that of a child, whose emotions range from delight to fear, with darker feelings usually resolved in the earlier Songs of Innocence by adult intervention. This first group of Songs was shaped by the heady early days of the French Revolution, when British liberals and radicals believed that true reform was imminent on both sides of the Channel.

The artist Edward Calvert met Blake around 1825 and commissioned this copy of Songs of Innocence and of Experience soon thereafter. These richly decorated pages, with their deeply saturated hues and distinctive ornamental borders, reveal Blake’s late vision and the order is established by small red numbers at upper right. This copy of Songs was later the first work to be purchased by the Museum’s new Department of Prints in 1917, recommended by its distinguished curator William M. Ivins, Jr.

Blake etched twenty-seven printing plates for Songs of Innocence in 1789, completing those for the Songs of Experience in 1794. He then printed and hand-colored copies of the combined sets over succeeding decades as patrons ordered them, each one visually distinct. Verse and image work together to celebrate poetic inspiration and reveal aspects of the divine as expressed through nature. The poetic voice is often that of a child, whose emotions range from delight to fear, with darker feelings usually resolved in the earlier Songs of Innocence by adult intervention. This first group of Songs was shaped by the heady early days of the French Revolution, when British liberals and radicals believed that true reform was imminent on both sides of the Channel.

The artist Edward Calvert met Blake around 1825 and commissioned this copy of Songs of Innocence and of Experience soon thereafter. These richly decorated pages, with their deeply saturated hues and distinctive ornamental borders, reveal Blake’s late vision and the order is established by small red numbers at upper right. This copy of Songs was later the first work to be purchased by the Museum’s new Department of Prints in 1917, recommended by its distinguished curator William M. Ivins, Jr.

Blake etched twenty-seven printing plates for Songs of Innocence in 1789, completing those for the Songs of Experience in 1794. He then printed and hand-colored copies of the combined sets over succeeding decades as patrons ordered them, each one visually distinct. Verse and image work together to celebrate poetic inspiration and reveal aspects of the divine as expressed through nature. The poetic voice is often that of a child, whose emotions range from delight to fear, with darker feelings usually resolved in the earlier Songs of Innocence by adult intervention. This first group of Songs was shaped by the heady early days of the French Revolution, when British liberals and radicals believed that true reform was imminent on both sides of the Channel.

The artist Edward Calvert met Blake around 1825 and commissioned this copy of Songs of Innocence and of Experience soon thereafter. These richly decorated pages, with their deeply saturated hues and distinctive ornamental borders, reveal Blake’s late vision and the order is established by small red numbers at upper right. This copy of Songs was later the first work to be purchased by the Museum’s new Department of Prints in 1917, recommended by its distinguished curator William M. Ivins, Jr.

Blake etched twenty-seven printing plates for Songs of Innocence in 1789, completing those for the Songs of Experience in 1794. He then printed and hand-colored copies of the combined sets over succeeding decades as patrons ordered them, each one visually distinct. Verse and image work together to celebrate poetic inspiration and reveal aspects of the divine as expressed through nature. The poetic voice is often that of a child, whose emotions range from delight to fear, with darker feelings usually resolved in the earlier Songs of Innocence by adult intervention. This first group of Songs was shaped by the heady early days of the French Revolution, when British liberals and radicals believed that true reform was imminent on both sides of the Channel.

The artist Edward Calvert met Blake around 1825 and commissioned this copy of Songs of Innocence and of Experience soon thereafter. These richly decorated pages, with their deeply saturated hues and distinctive ornamental borders, reveal Blake’s late vision and the order is established by small red numbers at upper right. This copy of Songs was later the first work to be purchased by the Museum’s new Department of Prints in 1917, recommended by its distinguished curator William M. Ivins, Jr.

Blake etched twenty-seven printing plates for Songs of Innocence in 1789, completing those for the Songs of Experience in 1794. He then printed and hand-colored copies of the combined sets over succeeding decades as patrons ordered them, each one visually distinct. Verse and image work together to celebrate poetic inspiration and reveal aspects of the divine as expressed through nature. The poetic voice is often that of a child, whose emotions range from delight to fear, with darker feelings usually resolved in the earlier Songs of Innocence by adult intervention. This first group of Songs was shaped by the heady early days of the French Revolution, when British liberals and radicals believed that true reform was imminent on both sides of the Channel.

The artist Edward Calvert met Blake around 1825 and commissioned this copy of Songs of Innocence and of Experience soon thereafter. These richly decorated pages, with their deeply saturated hues and distinctive ornamental borders, reveal Blake’s late vision and the order is established by small red numbers at upper right. This copy of Songs was later the first work to be purchased by the Museum’s new Department of Prints in 1917, recommended by its distinguished curator William M. Ivins, Jr.

Blake’s Songs of Experience contains twenty-seven pages. The artist etched the printing plates in 1794, expanding the scope of his earlier Songs of Innocence. He then printed and hand-colored copies of the combined sets over succeeding decades as patrons ordered them, each one visually distinct. Verse and image work together to celebrate poetic inspiration and reveal aspects of the divine as expressed through nature, but the tone of the later Songs of Experience is dark, even despairing. Children experience inexplicable cruelty at the hands of adults and the poet offers neither rescue nor resolution. These works were shaped by the later stages of the French Revolution, which was marked by regicide, the Terror, and repression of radical thinkers in Britain.
The artist Edward Calvert met Blake around 1825 and commissioned this copy of Songs of Innocence and of Experience soon thereafter. These richly decorated pages, with their deeply saturated hues and distinctive ornamental borders, reveal Blake’s late vision, and the order is established by small red numbers at upper right. This copy of Songs was later the first work to be purchased by the Museum’s new Department of Prints in 1917, recommended by its distinguished curator William M. Ivins, Jr.

Blake’s Songs of Experience contains twenty-seven pages. The artist etched the printing plates in 1794, expanding the scope of his earlier Songs of Innocence. He then printed and hand-colored copies of the combined sets over succeeding decades as patrons ordered them, each one visually distinct. Verse and image work together to celebrate poetic inspiration and reveal aspects of the divine as expressed through nature, but the tone of the later Songs of Experience is dark, even despairing. Children experience inexplicable cruelty at the hands of adults and the poet offers neither rescue nor resolution. These works were shaped by the later stages of the French Revolution, which was marked by regicide, the Terror, and repression of radical thinkers in Britain.

The artist Edward Calvert met Blake around 1825 and commissioned this copy of Songs of Innocence and of Experience soon thereafter. These richly decorated pages, with their deeply saturated hues and distinctive ornamental borders, reveal Blake’s late vision, and the order is established by small red numbers at upper right. This copy of Songs was later the first work to be purchased by the Museum’s new Department of Prints in 1917, recommended by its distinguished curator William M. Ivins, Jr.

Blake’s Songs of Experience contains twenty-seven pages. The artist etched the printing plates in 1794, expanding the scope of his earlier Songs of Innocence. He then printed and hand-colored copies of the combined sets over succeeding decades as patrons ordered them, each one visually distinct. Verse and image work together to celebrate poetic inspiration and reveal aspects of the divine as expressed through nature, but the tone of the later Songs of Experience is dark, even despairing. Children experience inexplicable cruelty at the hands of adults and the poet offers neither rescue nor resolution. These works were shaped by the later stages of the French Revolution, which was marked by regicide, the Terror, and repression of radical thinkers in Britain.

The artist Edward Calvert met Blake around 1825 and commissioned this copy of Songs of Innocence and of Experience soon thereafter. These richly decorated pages, with their deeply saturated hues and distinctive ornamental borders, reveal Blake’s late vision, and the order is established by small red numbers at upper right. This copy of Songs was later the first work to be purchased by the Museum’s new Department of Prints in 1917, recommended by its distinguished curator William M. Ivins, Jr.

Blake’s Songs of Experience contains twenty-seven pages. The artist etched the printing plates in 1794, expanding the scope of his earlier Songs of Innocence. He then printed and hand-colored copies of the combined sets over succeeding decades as patrons ordered them, each one visually distinct. Verse and image work together to celebrate poetic inspiration and reveal aspects of the divine as expressed through nature, but the tone of the later Songs of Experience is dark, even despairing. Children experience inexplicable cruelty at the hands of adults and the poet offers neither rescue nor resolution. These works were shaped by the later stages of the French Revolution, which was marked by regicide, the Terror, and repression of radical thinkers in Britain.

The artist Edward Calvert met Blake around 1825 and commissioned this copy of Songs of Innocence and of Experience soon thereafter. These richly decorated pages, with their deeply saturated hues and distinctive ornamental borders, reveal Blake’s late vision, and the order is established by small red numbers at upper right. This copy of Songs was later the first work to be purchased by the Museum’s new Department of Prints in 1917, recommended by its distinguished curator William M. Ivins, Jr.

Blake’s Songs of Experience contains twenty-seven pages. The artist etched the printing plates in 1794, expanding the scope of his earlier Songs of Innocence. He then printed and hand-colored copies of the combined sets over succeeding decades as patrons ordered them, each one visually distinct. Verse and image work together to celebrate poetic inspiration and reveal aspects of the divine as expressed through nature, but the tone of the later Songs of Experience is dark, even despairing. Children experience inexplicable cruelty at the hands of adults and the poet offers neither rescue nor resolution. These works were shaped by the later stages of the French Revolution, which was marked by regicide, the Terror, and repression of radical thinkers in Britain.

The artist Edward Calvert met Blake around 1825 and commissioned this copy of Songs of Innocence and of Experience soon thereafter. These richly decorated pages, with their deeply saturated hues and distinctive ornamental borders, reveal Blake’s late vision, and the order is established by small red numbers at upper right. This copy of Songs was later the first work to be purchased by the Museum’s new Department of Prints in 1917, recommended by its distinguished curator William M. Ivins, Jr.

Blake’s Songs of Experience contains twenty-seven pages. The artist etched the printing plates in 1794, expanding the scope of his earlier Songs of Innocence. He then printed and hand-colored copies of the combined sets over succeeding decades as patrons ordered them, each one visually distinct. Verse and image work together to celebrate poetic inspiration and reveal aspects of the divine as expressed through nature, but the tone of the later Songs of Experience is dark, even despairing. Children experience inexplicable cruelty at the hands of adults and the poet offers neither rescue nor resolution. These works were shaped by the later stages of the French Revolution, which was marked by regicide, the Terror, and repression of radical thinkers in Britain.

The artist Edward Calvert met Blake around 1825 and commissioned this copy of Songs of Innocence and of Experience soon thereafter. These richly decorated pages, with their deeply saturated hues and distinctive ornamental borders, reveal Blake’s late vision, and the order is established by small red numbers at upper right. This copy of Songs was later the first work to be purchased by the Museum’s new Department of Prints in 1917, recommended by its distinguished curator William M. Ivins, Jr.

Blake’s Songs of Experience contains twenty-seven pages. The artist etched the printing plates in 1794, expanding the scope of his earlier Songs of Innocence. He then printed and hand-colored copies of the combined sets over succeeding decades as patrons ordered them, each one visually distinct. Verse and image work together to celebrate poetic inspiration and reveal aspects of the divine as expressed through nature, but the tone of the later Songs of Experience is dark, even despairing. Children experience inexplicable cruelty at the hands of adults and the poet offers neither rescue nor resolution. These works were shaped by the later stages of the French Revolution, which was marked by regicide, the Terror, and repression of radical thinkers in Britain.

The artist Edward Calvert met Blake around 1825 and commissioned this copy of Songs of Innocence and of Experience soon thereafter. These richly decorated pages, with their deeply saturated hues and distinctive ornamental borders, reveal Blake’s late vision, and the order is established by small red numbers at upper right. This copy of Songs was later the first work to be purchased by the Museum’s new Department of Prints in 1917, recommended by its distinguished curator William M. Ivins, Jr.

Blake’s Songs of Experience contains twenty-seven pages. The artist etched the printing plates in 1794, expanding the scope of his earlier Songs of Innocence. He then printed and hand-colored copies of the combined sets over succeeding decades as patrons ordered them, each one visually distinct. Verse and image work together to celebrate poetic inspiration and reveal aspects of the divine as expressed through nature, but the tone of the later Songs of Experience is dark, even despairing. Children experience inexplicable cruelty at the hands of adults and the poet offers neither rescue nor resolution. These works were shaped by the later stages of the French Revolution, which was marked by regicide, the Terror, and repression of radical thinkers in Britain.

The artist Edward Calvert met Blake around 1825 and commissioned this copy of Songs of Innocence and of Experience soon thereafter. These richly decorated pages, with their deeply saturated hues and distinctive ornamental borders, reveal Blake’s late vision, and the order is established by small red numbers at upper right. This copy of Songs was later the first work to be purchased by the Museum’s new Department of Prints in 1917, recommended by its distinguished curator William M. Ivins, Jr.

Blake’s Songs of Experience contains twenty-seven pages. The artist etched the printing plates in 1794, expanding the scope of his earlier Songs of Innocence. He then printed and hand-colored copies of the combined sets over succeeding decades as patrons ordered them, each one visually distinct. Verse and image work together to celebrate poetic inspiration and reveal aspects of the divine as expressed through nature, but the tone of the later Songs of Experience is dark, even despairing. Children experience inexplicable cruelty at the hands of adults and the poet offers neither rescue nor resolution. These works were shaped by the later stages of the French Revolution, which was marked by regicide, the Terror, and repression of radical thinkers in Britain.

The artist Edward Calvert met Blake around 1825 and commissioned this copy of Songs of Innocence and of Experience soon thereafter. These richly decorated pages, with their deeply saturated hues and distinctive ornamental borders, reveal Blake’s late vision, and the order is established by small red numbers at upper right. This copy of Songs was later the first work to be purchased by the Museum’s new Department of Prints in 1917, recommended by its distinguished curator William M. Ivins, Jr.

Blake’s Songs of Experience contains twenty-seven pages. The artist etched the printing plates in 1794, expanding the scope of his earlier Songs of Innocence. He then printed and hand-colored copies of the combined sets over succeeding decades as patrons ordered them, each one visually distinct. Verse and image work together to celebrate poetic inspiration and reveal aspects of the divine as expressed through nature, but the tone of the later Songs of Experience is dark, even despairing. Children experience inexplicable cruelty at the hands of adults and the poet offers neither rescue nor resolution. These works were shaped by the later stages of the French Revolution, which was marked by regicide, the Terror, and repression of radical thinkers in Britain.

The artist Edward Calvert met Blake around 1825 and commissioned this copy of Songs of Innocence and of Experience soon thereafter. These richly decorated pages, with their deeply saturated hues and distinctive ornamental borders, reveal Blake’s late vision, and the order is established by small red numbers at upper right. This copy of Songs was later the first work to be purchased by the Museum’s new Department of Prints in 1917, recommended by its distinguished curator William M. Ivins, Jr.

One of Blake's best-known verses, "The Tyger," comes from the Songs of Innocence and of Experience. Blake originally produced this small, richly illustrated collection of short lyric verses as two separate books, in 1789 and 1794, then combined them into a single volume in the latter year. Although its small, colorful format recalls a children's book, its message is sophisticated and complex. Innocence and Experience contrast human existence, before and after the Fall. The pastoral poems in Innocence express religious faith and acceptance, and exhibit fine detail and flowing lines; the bardic verses in Experience, by contrast, convey disillusionment and anger, and employ bolder outlines. Published during the height of the Terror, the French Revolution left its mark on the second book.

Blake produced only twenty-four copies of the combined volume; this page comes from one of the last, prepared about 1825 for the painter and printmaker Edward Calvert (1799–1883). Its deep, saturated hues and distinctive ornamental borders (found on only one other copy) contrast with the lighter, paler colors of editions printed three decades earlier. The book remained in the Calvert family until the late nineteenth century; in 1917, it became the first work purchased for the Metropolitan Museum's new Department of Prints by its distinguished first curator, William M. Ivins, Jr.

Blake’s Songs of Experience contains twenty-seven pages. The artist etched the printing plates in 1794, expanding the scope of his earlier Songs of Innocence. He then printed and hand-colored copies of the combined sets over succeeding decades as patrons ordered them, each one visually distinct. Verse and image work together to celebrate poetic inspiration and reveal aspects of the divine as expressed through nature, but the tone of the later Songs of Experience is dark, even despairing. Children experience inexplicable cruelty at the hands of adults and the poet offers neither rescue nor resolution. These works were shaped by the later stages of the French Revolution, which was marked by regicide, the Terror, and repression of radical thinkers in Britain.

The artist Edward Calvert met Blake around 1825 and commissioned this copy of Songs of Innocence and of Experience soon thereafter. These richly decorated pages, with their deeply saturated hues and distinctive ornamental borders, reveal Blake’s late vision, and the order is established by small red numbers at upper right. This copy of Songs was later the first work to be purchased by the Museum’s new Department of Prints in 1917, recommended by its distinguished curator William M. Ivins, Jr.

Blake’s Songs of Experience contains twenty-seven pages. The artist etched the printing plates in 1794, expanding the scope of his earlier Songs of Innocence. He then printed and hand-colored copies of the combined sets over succeeding decades as patrons ordered them, each one visually distinct. Verse and image work together to celebrate poetic inspiration and reveal aspects of the divine as expressed through nature, but the tone of the later Songs of Experience is dark, even despairing. Children experience inexplicable cruelty at the hands of adults and the poet offers neither rescue nor resolution. These works were shaped by the later stages of the French Revolution, which was marked by regicide, the Terror, and repression of radical thinkers in Britain.

The artist Edward Calvert met Blake around 1825 and commissioned this copy of Songs of Innocence and of Experience soon thereafter. These richly decorated pages, with their deeply saturated hues and distinctive ornamental borders, reveal Blake’s late vision, and the order is established by small red numbers at upper right. This copy of Songs was later the first work to be purchased by the Museum’s new Department of Prints in 1917, recommended by its distinguished curator William M. Ivins, Jr.

Blake’s Songs of Experience contains twenty-seven pages. The artist etched the printing plates in 1794, expanding the scope of his earlier Songs of Innocence. He then printed and hand-colored copies of the combined sets over succeeding decades as patrons ordered them, each one visually distinct. Verse and image work together to celebrate poetic inspiration and reveal aspects of the divine as expressed through nature, but the tone of the later Songs of Experience is dark, even despairing. Children experience inexplicable cruelty at the hands of adults and the poet offers neither rescue nor resolution. These works were shaped by the later stages of the French Revolution, which was marked by regicide, the Terror, and repression of radical thinkers in Britain.

The artist Edward Calvert met Blake around 1825 and commissioned this copy of Songs of Innocence and of Experience soon thereafter. These richly decorated pages, with their deeply saturated hues and distinctive ornamental borders, reveal Blake’s late vision, and the order is established by small red numbers at upper right. This copy of Songs was later the first work to be purchased by the Museum’s new Department of Prints in 1917, recommended by its distinguished curator William M. Ivins, Jr.

Blake’s Songs of Experience contains twenty-seven pages. The artist etched the printing plates in 1794, expanding the scope of his earlier Songs of Innocence. He then printed and hand-colored copies of the combined sets over succeeding decades as patrons ordered them, each one visually distinct. Verse and image work together to celebrate poetic inspiration and reveal aspects of the divine as expressed through nature, but the tone of the later Songs of Experience is dark, even despairing. Children experience inexplicable cruelty at the hands of adults and the poet offers neither rescue nor resolution. These works were shaped by the later stages of the French Revolution, which was marked by regicide, the Terror, and repression of radical thinkers in Britain.

The artist Edward Calvert met Blake around 1825 and commissioned this copy of Songs of Innocence and of Experience soon thereafter. These richly decorated pages, with their deeply saturated hues and distinctive ornamental borders, reveal Blake’s late vision, and the order is established by small red numbers at upper right. This copy of Songs was later the first work to be purchased by the Museum’s new Department of Prints in 1917, recommended by its distinguished curator William M. Ivins, Jr.

Blake’s Songs of Experience contains twenty-seven pages. The artist etched the printing plates in 1794, expanding the scope of his earlier Songs of Innocence. He then printed and hand-colored copies of the combined sets over succeeding decades as patrons ordered them, each one visually distinct. Verse and image work together to celebrate poetic inspiration and reveal aspects of the divine as expressed through nature, but the tone of the later Songs of Experience is dark, even despairing. Children experience inexplicable cruelty at the hands of adults and the poet offers neither rescue nor resolution. These works were shaped by the later stages of the French Revolution, which was marked by regicide, the Terror, and repression of radical thinkers in Britain.

The artist Edward Calvert met Blake around 1825 and commissioned this copy of Songs of Innocence and of Experience soon thereafter. These richly decorated pages, with their deeply saturated hues and distinctive ornamental borders, reveal Blake’s late vision, and the order is established by small red numbers at upper right. This copy of Songs was later the first work to be purchased by the Museum’s new Department of Prints in 1917, recommended by its distinguished curator William M. Ivins, Jr.

Blake’s Songs of Experience contains twenty-seven pages. The artist etched the printing plates in 1794, expanding the scope of his earlier Songs of Innocence. He then printed and hand-colored copies of the combined sets over succeeding decades as patrons ordered them, each one visually distinct. Verse and image work together to celebrate poetic inspiration and reveal aspects of the divine as expressed through nature, but the tone of the later Songs of Experience is dark, even despairing. Children experience inexplicable cruelty at the hands of adults and the poet offers neither rescue nor resolution. These works were shaped by the later stages of the French Revolution, which was marked by regicide, the Terror, and repression of radical thinkers in Britain.

The artist Edward Calvert met Blake around 1825 and commissioned this copy of Songs of Innocence and of Experience soon thereafter. These richly decorated pages, with their deeply saturated hues and distinctive ornamental borders, reveal Blake’s late vision, and the order is established by small red numbers at upper right. This copy of Songs was later the first work to be purchased by the Museum’s new Department of Prints in 1917, recommended by its distinguished curator William M. Ivins, Jr.

Blake’s Songs of Experience contains twenty-seven pages. The artist etched the printing plates in 1794, expanding the scope of his earlier Songs of Innocence. He then printed and hand-colored copies of the combined sets over succeeding decades as patrons ordered them, each one visually distinct. Verse and image work together to celebrate poetic inspiration and reveal aspects of the divine as expressed through nature, but the tone of the later Songs of Experience is dark, even despairing. Children experience inexplicable cruelty at the hands of adults and the poet offers neither rescue nor resolution. These works were shaped by the later stages of the French Revolution, which was marked by regicide, the Terror, and repression of radical thinkers in Britain.

The artist Edward Calvert met Blake around 1825 and commissioned this copy of Songs of Innocence and of Experience soon thereafter. These richly decorated pages, with their deeply saturated hues and distinctive ornamental borders, reveal Blake’s late vision, and the order is established by small red numbers at upper right. This copy of Songs was later the first work to be purchased by the Museum’s new Department of Prints in 1917, recommended by its distinguished curator William M. Ivins, Jr.

Bigg depicts a group of girls and young women who offer money and clothing to a sailor’s orphaned family. The latter’s need is demonstrated by a bare hearth, anxious expressions, and the fact that an older woman heads the family, which suggests that the children have lost both parents. The visitors at right are, by contrast, well dressed and cheerful. Dated 1800, this print responds to hardships suffered in Britain as a result of its extended war with France, including the central role the Royal Navy played in defending against a threatened Napoleonic invasion.

Bigg was a Royal Academician who often depicted charity performed by children. This mezzotint reproduces a work he exhibited in 1780 and shows boys responding to a blind man. The latter’s red coat identifies him as a former soldier, perhaps a veteran of the American Revolutionary War. Little state support was available to needy Britons at this date and the children’s empathy highlights that problem. After reading the blind man’s sign, the boys share what they can—one reaches into a basket, another his pocket. This genre image recalls the plight of the sixth-century Roman general Belisarius, who after being blinded at the order of Emperor Justinian I, was reduced to begging for alms.
A proof of the print was shown at the Society of Artists in 1782.

West’s "The Golden Age" imagines an ideal time when humans lived in peace and prosperity. Within a rural interior suggestive of the classical past, a mother sews and watches over her sleeping child, as its grandparents enjoy the sun and feed poultry by an open doorway. Outside, nature’s fertility is affirmed by a ploughman who guides oxen and symbolizes the pastoral ideal associated with the Golden Age, an ideal period described by ancient authors such as Hesiod and Ovid. Ironically, when this print appeared, Britain and America had just entered the Revolutionary War, a conflict that shattered societal serenity on both sides of the Atlantic.

Based on a painting by Henry Walton, this print was published as a companion to Benjamin West’s "The Golden Age" (47.100.487). The two titles evoke early periods of human society described by ancient authors such as Hesiod and Ovid. Peace had prevailed in the preceding Golden Age when humans needed to do little work and mingled freely with the Olympian gods. But, in the following Silver Age, strife dominated society and labor became necessary for survival. As translated into eighteenth-century England, that decline is embodied by a weary market girl who has set down her heavy basket of chickens. Smith’s title alerts us to the underlying moral message that criticizes child labor.

Stubbs was eighteenth-century Britain’s greatest animal painter and a skilled etcher, an unusual combination of artistic skills for that period. The artist’s renderings of big cats generally are set in dark wooded settings; however, here, the lushly maned lion lies on a clifftop overlooking the sea. Distant palm trees evoke the animal’s native North African habitat, which the artist never visited. To study the lion’s form, Stubbs likely went to either the menagerie at the Tower of London or the one on Hounslow Heath maintained by Lord Shelbourne. The lion’s pose and expression convey his traditional status as king of beasts.

Stubbs’s masterful ability to both describe animals and suggest their inner life is evident in the curled form of this unconscious great cat. Soft-ground etching, enhanced with roulette work, was used to create the inky darkness that cloaks the sleeping body. At several points, the profile of the animal’s body merges with the gnarled tree trunk at its back, while its open mouth echoes the rounded negative spaces between the branches above. Pushing the possibilities of his medium, Stubbs captured the distinct textures of bark, fur, and rocky ground using a limited tonal range. Lions, tigers, and leopards represented nature’s ferocity and evoked terror for eighteenth-century viewers, an emotion associated with the sublime.

Emerging from a dark cave, Northcote's tiger fixes us with a mesmerizing stare. His stance and mask-like face suggest we are to be his next prey. Conceived during the opening years of the French Revolution, the image may be read as a metaphor warning Britons against the dangerous political forces on the loose across the Channel. The smoky medium of mezzotint was ideally suited to Murphy's rendering.

Calvert, the oldest member of the Ancients, was arguably its finest printmaker. Masterful control of line, strong articulation of light and shade, and bold sense of design lend his tiny lithographs surprising power, drawing the viewer into intricate worlds. Calvert's unusual approach to lithography may have been inspired by Blake's method of relief etching, which combined additive and subtractive processes. After drawing his design on the stone with tushe, a greasy black ink, Calvert then scratched away passages using a needle, creating fine white lines that resemble wood engraving. Here, a man helps a woman walk along a narrow log placed across a raging river towards a man who drives cattle along the bank at right.

Calvert, the oldest member of the Ancients, was arguably its finest printmaker. Masterful control of line, strong articulation of light and shade, and bold sense of design lend his tiny lithographs surprising power, drawing the viewer into intricate worlds. Calvert's unusual approach to lithography may have been inspired by Blake's method of relief etching, which combined additive and subtractive processes. After drawing his design on the stone with tushe, a greasy black ink, Calvert then scratched away passages using a needle, creating fine white lines that resemble wood engraving. Here, a womans tends a flock of sheep near a rustic fence as a man emerges from a wood, guiding a single sheep back towards the group.

In this richly detailed engraving, Calvert conjured an idealized medieval pastoral world. Made in the weeks immediately following Blake's death, "The Ploughman" affirms the artist's vocation, implying a parallel between cutting furrows in the soil and the printmaker's incisions in a woodblock. The print's full title, The Ploughman, or Christian Ploughing the Last Furrow of Life, alludes to Luke 9:62, "No man, having put his hand to the plough and looking back, is fit for the Kingdom of God." As Calvert's farmer looks heavenward, he sees a vision of the Good Shepherd who affirms the value of his work.

In this wood engraving, Calvert conjured a joyous, idealized pastoral world. In The Cyder Feast dancers celebrate an abundant apple crop as oxen turn a cider press before a huge setting sun.

This printed sheet is decorated at the top and sides with images that illustrate Thomas Day's "The Entertaining History of Little Jack." A vignette along the bottom shows a boy running in a landscape towards a goat. "The Story of Little Jack" was first published in 1788 with illustrations by Bewick and belongs to a genre that focused on stories centered on orphans or foundlings.
The work comes from a genre known as writing sheets, writing blanks, penmanship exercises, letter sheets or school pieces, published in Britain from the 1660s to 1860s and used by students to demonstrate their handwriting abilities. This example never used. While the publisher dated this print 1806, the paper is watermarked 1815, demonstrating that the printing plate was used over a long period.

This print is decorated at the top and sides with images from "Puss in Boots," a fairytale that originated in Italy with the best known version published in France by Charles Perrault (1628–1703). A cartouche at the bottom simulates a draped sheet held up by clusters of feathers that was intended to contain the name of a student scribe.
The work comes from a genre known as writing sheets, writing blanks, penmanship exercises, letter sheets or school pieces, published in Britain ca. 1660 to 1860 and used by students to demonstrate their handwriting abilities, with this example unusued. The publisher dated the print 1802, but the paper has an 1815 watermark, demonstrating that the related printing plate was used over a long period.

This print is decorated at the top and sides with small scenes that show men working in a paper mill, making pounce, black ink, sealing wax and examining quills. Moral verses at center were added in pen and ink by Joshua Brookes, a student at Mr. Trubey's Academy, Red Lion Court, Bermondsey Street, London (see 26.28.802 for another sheet signed by Brookes in 1783).
The work comes from a genre known as writing sheets, writing blanks, penmanship exercises, letter sheets or school pieces, published in Britain ca. 1660 to 1860 and used by students to demonstrate their handwriting abilities.

Ingres became close with the Lethière family while in Rome. Guillaume Guillon Lethière—the father-in-law and grandfather of the sitters in this work—was director of the French Academy there from 1807 to 1816. Rosa Meli was fifteen when she married his son, Alexandre Lethière, and she gave birth to their daughter the following year. In the drawing, she appears self-possessed as she gazes directly outward while propping the infant Letizia against her knee. Ingres’s refined neoclassical style and graphite technique contribute to the serene quality of the double portrait.

This delicately rendered study demonstrates Linnell’s mastery of intimate portraiture, a genre popularized in England in the eighteenth century that included miniatures painted on ivory as well as drawings. Here, the artist enhanced the lifelike effect by applying tiny touches of color to the eyes, lips, and cheeks of the unidentified sitters. Linnell started his career as a landscape painter but after he married turned to portraiture as a more reliable source of income for his family. He also supported fellow artist William Blake by commissioning engravings and watercolors, providing his friend with a steady income late in life.

Frølich built an international career as an illustrator. With the publisher and author Pierre-Jules Hetzel, he produced a popular series of children’s books featuring the adventures of Mademoiselle Lili, based on his own daughter Edma. The artist first studied drawing under Martinus Rørbye, Christen Købke, and C. W. Eckersberg in Denmark before traveling extensively in Germany, Italy, and France, where he settled for an extended period, spending a year in the studio of Thomas Couture. While in London during the Franco-Prussian War, he contributed these illustrations to Eliza Tabor’s book "When I Was a Little Girl: Stories for Children," published by Macmillan in 1871. These were among the first Danish drawings to enter The Met collection.

Frølich built an international career as an illustrator. With the publisher and author Pierre-Jules Hetzel, he produced a popular series of children’s books featuring the adventures of Mademoiselle Lili, based on his own daughter Edma. The artist first studied drawing under Martinus Rørbye, Christen Købke, and C. W. Eckersberg in Denmark before traveling extensively in Germany, Italy, and France, where he settled for an extended period, spending a year in the studio of Thomas Couture. While in London during the Franco-Prussian War, he contributed these illustrations to Eliza Tabor’s book "When I Was a Little Girl: Stories for Children," published by Macmillan in 1871. These were among the first Danish drawings to enter The Met collection.

Frølich built an international career as an illustrator. With the publisher and author Pierre-Jules Hetzel, he produced a popular series of children’s books featuring the adventures of Mademoiselle Lili, based on his own daughter Edma. The artist first studied drawing under Martinus Rørbye, Christen Købke, and C. W. Eckersberg in Denmark before traveling extensively in Germany, Italy, and France, where he settled for an extended period, spending a year in the studio of Thomas Couture. While in London during the Franco-Prussian War, he contributed these illustrations to Eliza Tabor’s book "When I Was a Little Girl: Stories for Children, "published by Macmillan in 1871. These were among the first Danish drawings to enter The Met collection.

From 1885 to 1908, Zahrtmann was one of the leading teachers at Copenhagen’s Kunstnernes Frie Studieskoler (Free Arts Schools), founded in the early 1880s as an alternative to the Royal Danish Academy. In the summers he traveled to Italy, eventually establishing a small artists’ colony in Civita d’Antino, a mountain town in the central region of Abruzzo. In this highly finished charcoal drawing—signed and dated by the artist—the models wear traditional clothing of the area. The mother and child gaze toward one another, transcending their physical separation in the composition.

Desboutin here portrays his second wife, Dominica Bellardi, adjusting the blankets around the couple’s third son, Jean-François, known by the nickname Tchiquine, asleep in the carriage. Older brother André stands proudly at the handle, ready to push. The artist’s delicate drypoint technique conveys the soft and varied textures, particularly of the textiles, throughout the composition. Like other members of the Impressionist circle with whom he exhibited, Desboutin rejected the period conventions of child portraiture to represent his family in the informal circumstances of their daily life.

Cassatt used this drawing to prepare the color print known by the same title. The verso of the sheet bears faint lines of soft-ground that adhered to it in the process of tracing the design to transfer it to the copperplate. The drawing reveals the artist changing her mind, adjusting the contours and position of the mother’s head and arms and the baby’s right foot. The resemblance of the sitters to those in an oil sketch titled "Mme de Fleury and Her Child" (private collection) suggests that this composition may portray one of Cassatt’s friends, as opposed to a professional model with whom she often worked.

After transferring her design for this print from the preparatory drawing (64.123.3), Cassatt established the figures with drypoint lines, incising directly into the copperplate with a needle. She then built up the areas of tone and pattern by working across two additional plates using aquatint. This work is one of a series of ten color prints for which she was directly inspired by Japanese ukiyo-e woodcuts, evident in the flattening of the pictorial space and use of unmodulated color. The artist first exhibited the print as "Nude Child" (Enfant nue); the current title derives from the 1948 catalogue raisonné and indicates the extent to which Cassatt’s work came to be associated with the subject of motherhood.

For nearly three quarters of the nineteenth century, upper- and middle-class Parisian families typically employed wet nurses to feed their infants. With the development of a science of child-rearing later in the century, it was increasingly advocated that mothers should nurse their own offspring. Here, the woman’s glazed expression conveys psychological distance from the child despite their physical connection.

Cassatt’s serial treatment of mothers and children emerged first in her graphic works during a period in which she experimented intensely with printmaking techniques. Here, the blurred quality of the lines results from the use of soft-ground etching and the murky, aqueous background from liquid aquatint. During her lifetime, critics appreciated her unsentimental approach to the maternal subject. In this image, baby Bill appears sprawled across his caregiver’s lap in an ungainly posture. Other prints show Bill with a nurse or nanny, raising questions about the identity of the so-called mother figure seen here.

In 1895, Cassatt exhibited an impression of this richly colored print at the Galerie Durand-Ruel in Paris as "Mother and Child" (Mère et enfant). Recent scholarship on this work clarifies that the addition of "peasant" to the title by the author of Cassatt’s catalogue raisonné in the mid-twentieth century is misleading. The model wears a highly fashionable and luxurious dress of green-gold silk with a Renaissance-revival-style sleeve. With her attention to their modishness, the artist emphasized the modernity of this mother and child.

The diminutive face of Vuillard’s newborn niece Annette appears amid a pile of bed linens and an exuberant array of patterns in fresh pinks and greens. His sister Marie leans over her tiny infant protectively. The composition evokes the precious and precarious state of this new life, acutely appreciated by the family who had experienced the tragedies of stillbirth and the death of a child in infancy. Marie and her husband, the painter Ker-Xavier Roussel, lived with Vuillard and his mother. The close quarters of their Parisian apartment fueled the artist’s explorations of the domestic realm and the emotions of family life.

Beginning in 1891, Bonnard collaborated with his brother-in-law, the composer Claude Terrasse, on the illustrations for a children’s music primer. In this design for the back cover, he shows his sister Andrée reading to her son Jean from a book of music. The abstracted musical notes were added to this proof in pen and ink. The artist made additional modifications around the mother’s hairline and to the contours of her face, scraping away certain areas and exposing the white of the paper. Some, but not all, of the corrections indicated on this impression were implemented in the final published print.

Bonnard’s inclusion of his own profile at lower right, against the checkered pattern of his sister Andrée’s dress, demonstrates his delight in the close observation of his first nephew, Jean, born in May 1892. He wrote to his friend Edouard Vuillard, "I’m a thousand times more blown away by my nephew’s cute little face than by all that I’ve seen in my travels." The narrow, vertical format and oblique, close-up perspective of this composition are likely adopted from Japanese ukiyo-e woodcuts, examples of which were shown in a landmark exhibition at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in 1890. Mary Cassatt’s own adaptation of the Japanese aesthetic and focus on domestic subject matter in her color prints exhibited the following year also likely inspired Bonnard.

Kollwitz’s experience as a mother was central to her artwork and advocacy. She created this lithograph of an exhausted mother physically sheltering her infant and toddler during the interwar period to raise awareness of the struggles of war widows and the poor. The print was distributed as the annual edition for the members of the Leipzig Art Association.

Kollwitz’s experience as a mother was central to her artwork and advocacy. She created this lithograph of a weary mother and sleeping boy at the height of her career during the interwar period. The Berlin publishing firm Künstler-Selbsthilfe issued the print to raise funds for financially strained artists.

Morisot made only eight drypoints, among which this self-portrait is the most accomplished. She shows herself in the act of drawing her reflection while her daughter, Julie Manet, looks on over her shoulder. Over the course of her career, Morisot depicted Julie more than any other subject. Here, she reconciles her dual roles as mother and artist in one image. Her prints were never published in her lifetime. For the posthumous edition, Julie titled this work "The Drawing Lesson."

Desboutin and Berthe Morisot both participated in the second Impressionist exhibition in the spring of 1876, though they almost certainly met earlier through their mutual friends Edouard Manet and Edgar Degas. In this print, Desboutin demonstrates the range of tones achievable in his preferred medium of drypoint—a technique in which the artist scratches the copperplate directly with a sharp needle. He juxtaposed the highly worked, rich blacks of Morisot’s dress, hair, and eyes with the faint outline of her armchair and the fashionable Japanese fan in her hands.

Desboutin was broke when he arrived in Paris in 1873. He quickly turned to printmaking, specializing in portraits of his contemporaries, which earned him from one to two hundred francs each. This life-size self-portrait, unusually large and heavily worked, presents the artist as a bohemian, an image already established by Edouard Manet in a full-length portrait of 1875 (Museu de Arte de São Paulo). Here, rather than representing himself with the traditional tools of his trade, he holds a pipe as his only accessory. He gazes directly over his shoulder; his disheveled hair is barely contained under his cap. Recognized by many as Desboutin’s masterpiece, this print was awarded a third-class medal at the Salon of 1879 and a medal of honor at the 1900 Paris Exposition Universelle.

This print, published in the journal "L’Art," accompanied a profile of Bracquemond, who was one of the most accomplished and prolific participants in the etching revival of the second half of the nineteenth century. Rajon based the print on a pastel self-portrait that Bracquemond exhibited at the Paris Salon in 1853. The image suggested the young artist’s grand ambitions for his career and, more broadly, for etching itself. He boldly meets the viewer’s gaze, surrounded by a small sculpture alluding to his classical training and the tools of his trade—an engraver’s burin and a bottle of etching acid.

Legros was among the founding members of the Société des Aquafortistes (Society of Etchers), established in Paris in 1862. The following year, he moved to London, where he worked for the remainder of his career. As a painter, he favored religious and genre subjects in a realist style, but as a draftsman and printmaker, he specialized in landscapes and portraits of distinguished sitters. He found a ready market for his work in all media in England. Legros maintained close ties with his French colleagues and helped his friends, such as Edouard Manet and Edgar Degas, navigate the English art world.

Desboutin and Ludovic Lepic met as mutual friends of Edgar Degas, who painted a double portrait of the two printmakers in 1876 (Musée d'Orsay). In this frank portrait from the same year, Lepic sits casually beside an easel. On the wall behind him is a drawing of Crouton, a water spaniel he gifted to Desboutin. In preparing this work, Desboutin developed it through seven states, creating many permutations of the composition in a manner similar to Lepic’s concept of "mobile etching," in which, by varying elements on the matrix, every impression was unique.

Manzi moved to Paris in the early 1880s to work for the renowned print publishing house Goupil & Cie. A pioneer of photomechanical printmaking, Manzi shared with Edgar Degas an interest in experimentation and innovative reproductive technologies. They worked together on a portfolio of twenty facsimiles of Degas’s drawings in 1898. Manzi also helped Degas to acquire the exceptional collection of prints by Edouard Manet from Philippe Burty’s estate. Among a dozen portraits he made of Degas, this print is dedicated to Paul Arthur Chéramy, a lawyer and collector, who represented Degas at trial in 1887, when he was sued for not finishing a commission.

For this informal portrait, Edgar Degas struck a pose like one of the dancers whom he frequently depicted. It dates from 1876, the year Desboutin first exhibited with the Impressionists at Degas’s invitation. Around the same time, Degas painted a portrait of Desboutin at work, alongside their mutual friend the printmaker Ludovic Lepic (Musée d'Orsay). In the second and final state of this portrait (22.63.66), Desboutin burnished out the lower half of Degas’s body in order to give the composition a more unfinished appearance.

"The Baby’s Bouquet," along with "The Baby’s Opera" (21.36.157), is among Crane’s best-known works. The decoration of the nursery featured in the title illustration displays Crane’s skill as a designer of ornament and wallpaper as well as his stylistic affiliation with the Arts and Crafts movement. His sister Lucy was responsible for the collection and arrangement of the tunes in this volume.

In the second half of the nineteenth century, richly illustrated publications for children called toy books flourished in England. Crane and Evans collaborated for over a decade, producing two to three a year, and became synonymous with the genre. Here, the border illustrations to "Little Bo-Peep" reveal the influence of William Blake.

The daughter of an engraver, Greenaway trained at the Slade School of Fine Art in London and began her career as a designer of greeting cards. Like her contemporary Walter Crane, she collaborated with the engraver Evans to publish children’s books in color, which achieved great commercial success. She produced an idealized and nostalgic image of rural childhood, dressing the children she illustrated in an eighteenth-century style that in turn became fashionable for children of her day.

Woodroffe illustrated his first book for children while a student at the Slade School of Fine Art in London in 1895. Throughout his career, he often collaborated with his childhood friend, composer Moorat, on books of songs; the two lived next door to one another in the Cotswolds. The whimsical designs that Woodroffe devised for "Thirty Old-Time Nursery Songs" demonstrate a range of influences from Walter Crane to Beatrix Potter.

Woodroffe illustrated his first book for children while a student at the Slade School of Fine Art in London in 1895. Throughout his career, he often collaborated with his childhood friend, composer Moorat, on books of songs; the two lived next door to one another in the Cotswolds. The whimsical designs that Woodroffe devised for "Thirty Old-Time Nursery Songs" demonstrate a range of influences from Walter Crane to Beatrix Potter.

The developments in children’s illustration in England by artists such as Walter Crane and Kate Greenaway were greatly admired in France. Their stylistic influence is evident in the work of Franc-Nohain, who began her career as a magazine illustrator. This journal was the first book she fully designed. It contains sections to record important events and milestones in the life of a baby.