Baron Schwiter (Louis Auguste Schwiter, 1805–1889)

Eugène Delacroix

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Baron Schwiter was related to Delacroix's friend Jean-Baptiste Pierret, and it was probably through this relationship that he met and became friends with Delacroix. The artist completed this portrait of his friend and fellow painter when the baron-to-be was just twenty-one. In the same year he began a painting of Schwiter, which was refused a place in the Salon of 1827; it was later purchased by Degas and now hangs in the National Gallery, London.

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