Study of a Seated Peasant

Study of a Seated Peasant

Cornelis Dusart

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Dusart was a devoted pupil of the popular and prolific genre painter Adriaen van Ostade. Like his master, Dusart spent his entire career in Haarlem and specialized in scenes of peasant life. His drawings in black and red chalk of single figures playing a musical instrument, reading, smoking, or sleeping are among his finest, and they were highly esteemed and valued by art lovers of his time. Nevertheless, his authorship of the present sheet was somehow forgotten along the line; a later owner wrote "Sachteleven" in the lower left corner, apparently assuming the drawing was by the Utrecht artist Cornelis. (Michiel Plomp)

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Study of a Seated PeasantStudy of a Seated PeasantStudy of a Seated PeasantStudy of a Seated PeasantStudy of a Seated Peasant

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.