Drummer Boy Attacked by a Cossack

Drummer Boy Attacked by a Cossack

Jean Victor Schnetz

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This drawing shows the stylistic influence of Gericault, whom Schnetz befriended in Italy in 1817. Both artists produced high-contrast drawings using white gouache around this time. Although this work was most likely made after the fall of Napoleon, the identification of the attacking horseman as a Cossack—a member of a Slavic military unit—suggests the subject’s association with the French invasion of Russia in 1812.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Drummer Boy Attacked by a CossackDrummer Boy Attacked by a CossackDrummer Boy Attacked by a CossackDrummer Boy Attacked by a CossackDrummer Boy Attacked by a Cossack

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.