Portrait of a Young Man

Portrait of a Young Man

Fulchran Jean Harriet

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

In the inscription on this drawing of an unknown sitter, dated 1802, Harriet noted his own status as a student at the Académie de France in Rome and pupil of Jacques Louis David. Indeed, he won the 1798 Prix de Rome with "The Battle of the Horatii and the Curiatii," which presents a decidedly Davidian subject. This elegant, highly finished portrait is one of very few surviving drawings by the artist, who died prematurely only a few years after making it, at the age of twenty-seven.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Portrait of a Young ManPortrait of a Young ManPortrait of a Young ManPortrait of a Young ManPortrait of a Young Man

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.