Study of a Nude Man Holding Bottles

Antoine Watteau

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The four large oval paintings of the Seasons commissioned by Pierre Crozat (1665–1740) for his Paris dining room constitute rare examples of mythological subjects in Watteau's oeuvre. The painting Autumn, known today only through engravings, depicted a standing satyr pouring wine for a seated Bacchus. This sheet is one of two known studies (the other is in the Courtauld Institute Galleries, London) for the figure of the standing satyr. The New York drawing must have been the earliest, made before Watteau decided to bend the satyr's pouring arm to better suit the oval format. Red, black, and white chalk are intuitively combined to produce the appropriately ruddy flesh tones of the satyr.

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