Man and woman in a landscape (Faust and Marguerite)

Richard Parkes Bonington

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Rich brown ink is used here to describe a hilly landscape with a gallant figure in late medieval dress reading to a demure young woman. They likely represent Faust and Marguerite from Goethe's dramatic poem "Faust" (1808). The latter tells how a young nobleman becomes fascinated with magic, sells his soul to the devil and seduces and destroys the innocent Marguerite. Dramatic literary subjects of this kind appealed to the British-born Bonington, and to French artists he knew in Paris. His close friend Delacroix once owned this drawing and, in 1828, would create a series of seventeen lithographs inspired by Faust.

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