A Sleeping Leopard

George Stubbs

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Stubbs’s masterful ability to both describe animals and suggest their inner life is evident in the curled form of this unconscious great cat. Soft-ground etching, enhanced with roulette work, was used to create the inky darkness that cloaks the sleeping body. At several points, the profile of the animal’s body merges with the gnarled tree trunk at its back, while its open mouth echoes the rounded negative spaces between the branches above. Pushing the possibilities of his medium, Stubbs captured the distinct textures of bark, fur, and rocky ground using a limited tonal range. Lions, tigers, and leopards represented nature’s ferocity and evoked terror for eighteenth-century viewers, an emotion associated with the sublime.

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