Carmelita Requena

Thomas Eakins

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

After completing his studies in Paris, Eakins traveled to Spain in 1869. While in Madrid, he visited the Museo del Prado, where he admired the paintings of Diego Velázquez and Jusepe de Ribera. He then settled for the winter in Seville, from where he wrote to his sister that he was painting Carmelita Requeña, the seven-year-old daughter of street performers. This portrait sketch, made in preparation for a large multi-figure composition, reveals Eakins’s lessons in Paris under Léon Bonnat, who advocated the painterly tradition of the Spanish Baroque masters.

The American Wing

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The American Wing's ever-evolving collection comprises some 20,000 works of art by African American, Euro American, Latin American, and Native American men and women. Ranging from the colonial to early-modern periods, the holdings include painting, sculpture, works on paper, and decorative arts—including furniture, textiles, ceramics, glass, silver, metalwork, jewelry, basketry, quill and bead embroidery—as well as historical interiors and architectural fragments.

Metropolitan Museum of Art