Studies of Hands

Studies of Hands

Alphonse Legros

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Legros, who is best remembered today for his etchings and drawings, is among the few nineteenth-century artists to have worked in metalpoint, a process in which a metal stylus is used to draw on prepared, slightly roughened paper, thereby rubbing off tiny shards of metal and leaving behind delicate silvery lines. Jan van Eyck and Leonardo da Vinci made some of the most beautiful drawings of the Renaissance using this technique, and Legros pays tribute to the Old Masters as much in his choice of metalpoint as in the clarity and simplicity of his style. The hands seen in this sheet are probably his own, studied in a mirror. The drawing is a part of a group of thirty-two given by the artist to the Museum in 1892, in gratitude for which he was made an Honorary Fellow.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Studies of HandsStudies of HandsStudies of HandsStudies of HandsStudies of Hands

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.