La Jeu de la Palette

Jean Claude Richard, Abbé de Saint-Non

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

A patron of the arts and also a printmaker, Saint-Non made etchings based on drawings by many of France's leading artists, which he published in suites entitled, Griffonis (1755–78). About 1765, he developed aquatint as a tonal process he could employ to suggest ink washes in his prints after the drawings of his friends Fragonard and Hubert Robert.

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