The Connoisseur

Honoré Daumier

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

When, in 1860, Daumier was temporarily let go by his primary employer—the popular magazine that published his lithographs, Le Charivari—he began to produce highly finished watercolors such as this one to appeal to a burgeoning market of bourgeois collectors. Throughout his career, he often treated the theme of art spectators and enthusiasts. Here, he portrayed an exemplary connoisseur reclining in an armchair and contemplating his surrounding collection. The object of his gaze is a tabletop replica of the Venus de Milo, the monumental Greek marble that came to symbolize the beauty of Antique art upon its installation in the Musée du Louvre in 1821. This watercolor was included in Daumier’s only one-man exhibition during his lifetime, held at the Durand-Ruel Gallery in 1878.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

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.

Metropolitan Museum of Art