A Voice from the Cliffs

Winslow Homer

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Three fisher women, carrying nets and baskets, stand below seaside cliffs and pause to listen to joyful birdsong. The composition is based on a watercolor of 1883 (private collection), which was no longer in the artist's possession when he made the etching. Ultimately, Homer derived the composition from an oil ("Hark! The Lark!, 1882, Milwaukee Art Museum) made during a visit to England centered on the seaside village of Cullercoats, north of Tynemouth.

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