The Bone Player

William Sidney Mount

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Five years before the Civil War, Mount received a commission from the French publisher Goupil and Company to paint African American musicians that would be lithographed for European print buyers. This hand-colored image reproduces a life-size painting now at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts and shows a well-dressed figure playing a rythmic instrument associated with minstrel shows. The musician's face and dress convey individuality, while the ivory or bone strips he holds associates him a type exotically appealing to Europeans. This version of the print was published in New York, indicating a market on both sides of the Atlantic.

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