Portrait of a Young Man

Portrait of a Young Man

Goya (Francisco de Goya y Lucientes)

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Because of its similarity in style and format to Goya's portrait of his lithography printer, Gaulon, this work was once thought to be his portrait of Gaulon's son. Only two impressions of the print are known. This impression was once owned by Frédéric Villot, a close friend of Delacroix and curator of paintings at the Musée du Louvre during the 1850's. The other example, now in the British Museum, belonged to the Parisian art critic and fine print collector Philippe Burty (1830–1890), who owned several of the prints by Goya shown in this exhibition. If not by Goya, this lithograph is likely to be the work of an artist in Delacroix's circle.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

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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.