Seven Studies of Moroccan Men's Costume

Eugène Delacroix

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Delacroix filled seven sketchbooks during his six months of travel through North Africa and Spain in 1832. Many of his drawings from the trip appear to have been jotted extremely quickly and carry minimal visual information, yet Delacroix believed strongly in their potency. "Learn to draw," he wrote, "and in returning from travel, you will carry with you memories. . . . That simple mark of the pencil . . . recalls, along with the place that struck you, all the associations connected with it . . . a thousand delicious impressions."

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