Lindisfarne Castle, Holy Island, Northumberland

Thomas Girtin

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Holy Island is dramatically situated on the coast of Northumbria and is reached at low tide by a track over the sand. This watercolor was likely based on sketches Girtin made during his tour to Scotland and northern England in the summer and early fall of 1796, and probably dates from 1797, when he exhibited ten subjects from the tour at the Royal Academy. Much influenced by J. M. W. Turner (1775–1851) and by John Robert Cozens (1752–1797), Girtin imparted a visionary grandeur to the scene. The massive basalt rock, rising above the shore and topped by a sixteenth-century castle, becomes the focus of the composition, overshadowing tiny human figures in the foreground. Relegated to the distant left background are the harbor, fishing village, and church of Saint Mary, with its extensive ruins of a priory and monastery.

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