Figure in a Doorway

Figure in a Doorway

Eugène Delacroix

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

As part of a government mission to Morocco, Delacroix gained entry to places typically inaccessible to Europeans. The buildings in this drawing may represent part of the royal palace complex at Meknès, which the French delegation visited following their audience with Sultan Abd er-Rahman (r. 1822–59). The pinkish-red terracotta color surrounding the window here appears frequently among his visual souvenirs of architecture, decoration, and dress in Morocco and Andalusia.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

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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.