At Five Ponds, North Waterford, Maine

Edward Seager

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Seager, a drawing instructor at the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis from 1850 to 1860, working with the uncommon technique of sgraffito, in which white highlights are produced by scratching through a layer of tinted gesso to reveal the white paper, Seager achieved effects approximating gouache highlights. He probably executed this drawing on a tour of southern Maine The view is west to the White Mountains where the uppermost peak among those relieved by the sweep of clouds is windblown Mount Washington, the crown of New England, the highest mountain in the Northeast and, since the early nineteenth century, both a tourist mecca and a perennial artists’ subject.

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