Self-Portrait

Edgar Degas

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Degas’s early study of printmaking led him to a close examination of Rembrandt’s etched portraits, including their shifts between more and less finished compositions. This exceptionally rare first state of the artist’s 1857 self-portrait has an evanescent quality, an effect that is reinforced by the complete lack of finish in the sitter’s hands and the drawing tools they hold, which are visible in later states.

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