Seated Man Reading

Jean Honoré Fragonard

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This confident drawing of a seated man absorbed in his book is closely related to a group of portraitlike drawings made by Fragonard on his second trip to Italy (1773–74) sponsored by the fermier général Pierre-Jacques-Onésyme Bergeret de Grancourt. Drawn in a rapid, confident outline and shaded to convey tone and shadow, this drawing presents its subject with an admirable economy of means. Oddly cropped at the ankle, the sitter may have been observed by the artist across a table and partially obscured. The unconventional composition attests to the informality of the sheet.

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