A Rocky Coast

William Trost Richards

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

In their effort to elevate the status of watercolor in the U.S., some members of the American Watercolor Society produced works on the scale of exhibition oil paintings, and even worked heavily in gouache or body color, to lend the medium some of the richness of effect of oil. Richards joined this trend around 1876, and embellished on it by working on a dark, heavy, fibrous paper—used to line carpets—that approximated both the textural qualities of canvas and the conventional half-tone gray or brown grounds on which painters traditionally applied their colors. Richards found that his carpet paper "drawings," as he called them, were "very popular." The great Metropolitan Museum benefactor Catharine Lorillard Wolfe purchased this one at his Newport studio in 1877.

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