A Man and a Woman Embracing

A Man and a Woman Embracing

baron Antoine Jean Gros

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Of all of Jacques Louis David’s students, Gros was among the most successful and the most loyal. When David was banished from France after the downfall of Napoleon, it was to Gros whom he entrusted the management of his studio. Despite the enduring closeness of the two men, their drawing techniques could hardly have been more different. While David’s technique was rational and legible, Gros tended to cover the sheet with a flurry of rapid sketches. This study of a couple embracing may have been related to his lost painting Les Bergers d’Arcadie (The Shepherds of Arcadia), executed around 1792.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

A Man and a Woman EmbracingA Man and a Woman EmbracingA Man and a Woman EmbracingA Man and a Woman EmbracingA Man and a Woman Embracing

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.