In the Park at Packington

In the Park at Packington

Heneage Finch, 4th Earl of Aylesford

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Active as a statesman and patron of British cultural institutions, Aylesford was also a gifted amateur draftsman and etcher. Before he became earl in 1777, the artist studied drawing as an undergraduate at Oxford. The strong ink outlines and assured application of wash in this mature drawing suggest a date in the mid-1780s. Italian precedents influenced his draftsmanship, but his expressive response to a tree found on his Warwickshire estate echoes Rembrandt. (Aylesford collected the seventeenth-century Dutch master’s prints and learned to etch in a similar manner.) This drawing anticipates the poetic landscapes of the next century’s Romantic era, such as the work by Samuel Palmer that hangs nearby.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

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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.