Young pollards

John Constable

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Constable, or his friend Frost, here sketched a curved path leading through trees whose branches have been trimmed or "pollarded," with thin shoots later growing from the pruned areas. Frost often worked in a style that deliberately imitated that of his friend, which makes it difficult to determine which one of them was responsible for sheets like this one.

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