Nude Figure on Hands and Knees (Executioner)

Nude Figure on Hands and Knees (Executioner)

Auguste Rodin

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Rodin rarely included any setting or background in his drawings of female nudes. This example, however, belongs to a series in which he played with the aqueous quality of the watercolor medium to suggest a marine environment. He seems to have enjoyed the blotches and tide lines created by using too much water on his brush, actively seeking this effect in a number of drawings. This work was a gift to the Museum by Thomas Fortune Ryan, who also donated "Beside the Sea" (11.173.5), a marble sculpture of a similar subject.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Nude Figure on Hands and Knees (Executioner)Nude Figure on Hands and Knees (Executioner)Nude Figure on Hands and Knees (Executioner)Nude Figure on Hands and Knees (Executioner)Nude Figure on Hands and Knees (Executioner)

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.