Artists and Amateurs: Etching in Eighteenth-Century France

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.