A wooded river landscape with a fisherman in a boat

A wooded river landscape with a fisherman in a boat

Benjamin Barker, the younger

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Benjamin Barker II was an accomplished landscape painter in an artistic family that included his father, Benjamin the Elder (1729-1803), and brothers, Thomas (1769-1847) and Joseph (1782-1809). He also made prints--publishing a set of 48 aquatints in 1824 titled "English Landscape Scenery-- and making watercolors (the latter exhibted at the Royal Watercolor Society between 1800-1831). This oil study demonstrates his admiration for Gainsborough's landscapes of the Bath period (1760-73), a city to which Barker moved about 1783.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

A wooded river landscape with a fisherman in a boatA wooded river landscape with a fisherman in a boatA wooded river landscape with a fisherman in a boatA wooded river landscape with a fisherman in a boatA wooded river landscape with a fisherman in a boat

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.