The orange market, with the Rialto Bridge beyond, Venice

The orange market, with the Rialto Bridge beyond, Venice

James Holland

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Holland visited Italy for the first time in 1835, returned often, and gained a reputation in Britain for his watercolors of Venetian subjects. Here he portrays a bustling market scene and uses saturated, opaque colors, mixing watercolor and gouache reinforced with graphite. In the foreground at the right, before San Bartolomeo, figures transport goods from vessels to the stone buildings that line the Grand Canal. The Rialto Bridge bisects the scene, with Casa Ruzzini, and the pinnacled upper story of the Fondaco dei Tedeschi on the left, and the Palazzo Camerlinghi on the right.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The orange market, with the Rialto Bridge beyond, VeniceThe orange market, with the Rialto Bridge beyond, VeniceThe orange market, with the Rialto Bridge beyond, VeniceThe orange market, with the Rialto Bridge beyond, VeniceThe orange market, with the Rialto Bridge beyond, Venice

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.