A Man Reading in a Garden (recto); Preliminary sketch for a Man Reading in a Garden (verso)

A Man Reading in a Garden (recto); Preliminary sketch for a Man Reading in a Garden (verso)

Honoré Daumier

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

After Daumier's death, this drawing came into the hands of the Paris art dealers Boussod & Valadon, where Vincent Van Gogh's brother, Theo, worked. Vincent seems to have recalled seeing it, writing to his brother on October 22, 1882: "I remember very well being most impressed by a drawing of Daumier's: an old man under the chestnut trees in the Champs Elysées. . . . What impressed me so much at the time was something so stout and manly in Daumier's conception, something that made me think it must be good to think and to feel like that and to overlook or ignore a multitude of things and to concentrate on what makes us sit up and think and what touches us as human beings more directly and personally than meadows or clouds."

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

A Man Reading in a Garden (recto); Preliminary sketch for a Man Reading in a Garden (verso)A Man Reading in a Garden (recto); Preliminary sketch for a Man Reading in a Garden (verso)A Man Reading in a Garden (recto); Preliminary sketch for a Man Reading in a Garden (verso)A Man Reading in a Garden (recto); Preliminary sketch for a Man Reading in a Garden (verso)A Man Reading in a Garden (recto); Preliminary sketch for a Man Reading in a Garden (verso)

The Department’s vast collection of works on paper comprises approximately 21,000 drawings, 1.2 million prints, and 12,000 illustrated books created in Europe and the Americas from about 1400 to the present day. Since its foundation in 1916, the Department has been committed to collecting a wide range of works on paper, which includes both pieces that are incredibly rare and lauded for their aesthetic appeal, as well as material that is more popular, functional, and ephemeral. The broad scope of the department’s collecting encourages questions of connoisseurship as well as those pertaining to function and context, and demonstrates the vital role that prints, drawings, and illustrated books have played throughout history.