Three Arab Horsemen at an Encampment

Eugène Delacroix

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Delacroix produced this watercolor based on his sketches, notes, and memories of a ten-day journey between Tangier and Meknès. The blue hills in the background evoke his description of the mountainous landscape as "violet in the morning and evening, blue during the day." He shows just three of the multitude of horsemen that accompanied the diplomatic envoy; two are seated at rest, while the central mounted figure adopts a posture reminiscent of Delacroix’s depictions of Sultan Abd er-Rahman.

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