MetPublications

The vast holdings of the Metropolitan Museum's Department of Drawings and Prints include many acclaimed highlights of the European graphic arts tradition, but also a wealth of lesser-known areas ripe for exploration. With this exhibition and its accompanying publication, Perrin Stein, Curator in the department and a specialist in French Old Master drawings and prints, turns our attention to one such area: etchings made in eighteenth-century France by artists (painters, sculptors, and architects) as well as amateurs, a term used at the time to describe an elite class of art collectors and connoisseurs who believed that artistic practice was an essential component of study, collecting, and criticism.

This handsome volume presents selections from one of America's preeminent private collections of Old Master drawings, assembled over the last quarter century by David M. and Julie Tobey. Dating from the sixteenth through the eighteenth centuries, seventy-two drawings—several previously unpublished—are featured. The diverse array of holdings consists principally of works by Italian masters but also by artists whose careers brought them south of the Alps, among them such brilliant draftsmen as Correggio, Giulio Romano, Parmigianino, Salvator Rosa, Poussin, Bernini, Canaletto, Tiepolo, and their contemporaries. Impressive in their variety, the drawings include figure and composition studies, landscapes, portraits, botanical drawings, motifs inspired by classical antiquity, and designs for painted compositions. Among the highlights are a splendid study of the head of Julius Caesar by Andrea del Sarto, a lively sheet of sketches by Perino del Vaga, a stunningly naturalistic study of a nude boy by Ludovico Carracci, a poetic Guercino landscape, charming topographical views by Luca Carlegarijs, Canaletto, and Bernardo Bellotto, a rare composition drawing by Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, and a richly painted allegory by Giovanni David, to name just a few of the superlative examples in this carefully formed collection. The catalogue includes lengthy entries on each drawing and illuminating biographies of the artists. Every drawing in the Tobey Collection is reproduced in color and accompanied by numerous comparative illustrations. The contributors are Linda Wolk-Simon, Curator; George R. Goldner, Drue Heinz Chairman; Carmen C. Bambach and Perrin Stein, Curators; and Stijn Alsteens, Associate Curator, all of the Department of Drawings and Prints, The Metropolitan Museum of Art; and Mary Vaccaro, Professor of Art History at the University of Texas at Arlington.

Lovers of European drawing will take delight in this beautifully illustrated volume of 120 drawings that cover some 500 years of art history and represent a diversity of artistic schools in Italy, Northern Europe, France, and Great Britain. They were selected from the notable collection of Jean Bonna of Geneva, Switzerland, and they highlight the rich quality and diversity of the Bonna Collection. The drawings are as varied in their range of subject matter as they are in medium and artistic style, and they encompass fine examples by both major masters and less well-known artists. Narrative scenes, religious subjects, studies of the human figure, formal and informal portraits, animal and nature studies, landscapes, cityscapes, and seascapes predominate in the collection. The catalogue begins with such Italian artists as Andrea del Sarto, Raphael, Palma Il Giovane, Ludovico and Annibale Carracci, Canaletto, Francesco Guardi, and Giandomenico Tiepolo. The Northern European artists include the Master of the Farm Landscapes, Jacob Jordaens, Rembrandt van Rijn, and Lambert Doomer. Eighteenth-century accomplishments in French art are exemplified in exceptional works by Claude Lorrain, Pierre Puget, Charles Le Brun, Jean-Antoine Watteau, Jean-Baptiste Greuze, Pierre-Adrien Pâris, Jean-Siméon Chardin, and François Boucher. From the nineteenth century, there are emblematic works by such varied artists as Pierre-Paul Prud'hon, Théodore Gericault, Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, Edgar Degas, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Odilon Redon, Paul Cézanne, Vincent van Gogh, and Georges Seurat. Although many of the drawings in Jean Bonna's collection have previously been published and exhibited, the quality and scope of his holdings have not been explored so fully until this publication and the exhibition it accompanies. The works from the Bonna Collection are illustrated in color, and whenever possible, at their actual sizes. They are arranged chronologically by the artist's date of birth and are grouped according to the main artistic schools. This volume is introduced by an interview with Jean Bonna by George Goldner, Drue Heinz Chairman of the Department of Drawings and Prints, The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Each drawing is then described in an entry, many of which have comparative illustrations that shed further light on individual works. The entries were written by the curators of the Department of Drawings and Prints, The Metropolitan Museum of Art; the curator of the Bonna Collection; and well-known specialists in their respective fields.

The first of a special two-part edition of Recent Acquisitions, this Bulletin celebrates works acquired by the Museum in 2019 and 2020, many of which were gifts bestowed in honor of the Museum’s 150th anniversary year. Highlights of this volume include a sumptuous set of handscrolls depicting The Tale of Genji, a second-century Roman wellhead, a drawing of a landscape by French artist Claude Lorrain, and nearly one hundred Indian paintings. This publication also honors the many generous contributions from donors that make possible the continued growth of The Met's collection.

The second volume in a special two-part edition of Recent Acquisitions, this Bulletin celebrates works acquired by the Museum in 2019 and 2020, many of which were gifts bestowed in honor of the Museum’s 150th anniversary year. Highlights of this volume include Jean-Baptise Carpeaux’s astonishing portrayal of an African woman in the marble sculpture Why Born Enslaved!, a monumental storage jar by African American potter and poet David Drake, an exquisite lacquer mirror case depicting an 1838 meeting between the crown prince of Iran and the tsar of Russia, and Carmen Herrera’s abstract work dating to 1949, Iberic. This publication also honors the many generous contributions from donors that make possible the continued growth of The Met's collection.