Sculptor Receiving Visitors in his Studio

Sculptor Receiving Visitors in his Studio

Nicolaas Aartman

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The eighteenth-century Dutch artist Nicolaes Aartman produced various designs for book illustrations, as well as small-scale independent drawings. This scene of a fashionable couple visiting a sculptor’s workshop may have been intended as a design for a book illustration, although no print after the design is known. The image provides an interesting insight into a contemporary sculptor’s atelier. The master sculptor points towards his latest masterpiece; a free standing statue of a female nude, while his assistant to the left is carving the epitaph on a tombstone. Various workshop attributes – compasses, levels and hammers – are lying around. Little statuettes and other sculptural objects are lining the walls and even hanging from the ceiling.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Sculptor Receiving Visitors in his StudioSculptor Receiving Visitors in his StudioSculptor Receiving Visitors in his StudioSculptor Receiving Visitors in his StudioSculptor Receiving Visitors in his Studio

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.