View of a Park

Jean Honoré Fragonard

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Having won a student competition in Paris, Fragonard was awarded four years of study at the Académie de France in Rome. Made not long after his arrival, this theatrical landscape drawing displays a hybrid of influences. His early training in Boucher’s studio is evident in the feathery trees and charming genre figures, including the woman pushing a wheelbarrow and the man peering over a fence. Scattered throughout the composition are various architectural motifs—a palatial staircase, columned temples, and a statue of an ancient Roman goddess—that reflect his exposure to the gardens of Italy.

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