Greenwich Hospital (recto); Study of a Building (verso)

David Cox

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This watercolor sketch brims with useful information: near the top of the sheet, between the paired columns, touches of blue (and, elsewhere, the word "blue") indicate the color of the sky; at the upper right, a triangle of brown wash suggests a pediment; in the center, swift strokes of black, red, and blue describe figures dressed in naval uniform. Cox began his career as a theatrical scene painter and rose to become one of the leading watercolor artists of the nineteenth century. He first exhibited views of Greenwich in the early 1820s, and the handling here anticipates drawings that Cox made in Paris in 1829. Christopher Wren and Nicholas Hawksmoor designed Greenwich Hospital as a retirement home for saliors of the British Royal Navy, and it operated as such between 1692 and 1869.

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