Collision of Moorish Horsemen

Eugène Delacroix

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Delacroix's etching and his painting of this subject (which was rejected for the Salon of 1834) are based on an incident the artist witnessed near Tangier in 1832 and described as follows: "During [the Arabs'] military exercises, which consist of riding their horses at full speed and stopping them suddenly after firing a shot, it often happens that the horses carry away their riders and fight each other when they collide."

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