Self-Portrait

Jean Etienne Liotard

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Liotard’s career as a portraitist took him from Geneva to Paris, Vienna, and London and included long sojourns in Turkey. During a visit to England in 1773, he exhibited a pastel self-portrait at the Royal Academy that he later transformed into this black-and-white print, probably under the influence of British masters of mezzotint. The medium’s non-linear qualities are particularly well suited to capturing the tonal gradations of pastel. Famous for portraying his subjects frankly, Liotard also excelled in the poetic handling of light and here combined mezzotint, engraving, and roulette in an experimental, expressive manner.

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