The Month of March

Sir Edward Burne-Jones

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Burne-Jones worked with William Morris on decorative projects for more than thirty years. This early design represents March as a young woman carrying a ram, the zodiacal sign for Aries. She stands amid blooming crocuses and blackthorn and is serenaded by a song thrush. The drawing was used to create a painted panel, one of a series dedicated to the months in the Green Dining Room at the new South Kensington (now Victoria and Albert) Museum. The scheme helped to establish the reputation of Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Company, and the finished room was described in 1875 as “one of the pleasantest little picture-galleries in existence.”

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