Riders with sheep near an estuary

David Cox

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Cox painted this watercolor, which may represent Traeth Mawr, near Harlech in North Wales, at mid-career, having already published an influential treatise on watercolor, made European tours, and moved to London. In the years that followed, he would translate his picturesque views into oil paintings and cultivate an increasingly sketchy style in his drawings. But at the time he prepared this watercolor, the artist favored sweeping, cleanly described views with strong hues used sparingly. Touches of brilliant blue animate the sky, while minute passages of emerald and vermilion punctuate the jacket of a standing youth and a rider’s cloak.

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