River Landscape in Wales

David Cox

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

David Cox, an acclaimed landscape painter and author of various treatises on the techniques of watercolor, visited the picturesque Welch town of Bettsw-y-Coed frequently between 1844 and 1856. This dramatic view may represent the River Llugwy in Caernarvonshire, near Bettws. Cox swept broad washes of muted color across the large sheet (a size favored for exhibition pieces), employing the pronounced texture of the paper to achieve bold atmospheric effects.

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