Boy with a Sword, Turned Left

Edouard Manet

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This print is the most successful of Manet's several efforts to reproduce the painting of the same title that has been in the Metropolitan Museum's collection since 1889 (89.21.2). Converting brushstrokes into lines never came easily to the artist, but he wisely studied the prints of Goya, where he learned how to tone etchings with aquatint and pack together scribbled lines. Thus, when it came to etching a copy of his painting inspired by one of a court page by Velázquez, he could employ the same methods Goya had used when etching copies of Velázquez's portraits.

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