Study of a Palm Tree (recto); Mountain Landscape (verso)

Nicolas Poussin

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This rare, double-sided sheet comprises two studies by Nicolas Poussin, a founding figure of the French grand manner. It is part of a small group of surviving landscape drawings, presumably made in plein air, that offer evidence that Poussin's classicizing landscapes were based on the direct observation of nature. On the recto is a study of a palm tree with lush foliage and rough bark. Detailed studies of individual landscape motifs are otherwise unknown in Poussin's oeuvre, though lone palm trees do occupy prominent positions in several of his paintings, where they serve to identify the setting as the Holy Land. On the verso, Poussin created an expansive landscape with a remarkable economy of means. Although the composition does not appear to be connected to an extant painting, the distant craggy peaks, the stand of trees to the right, and the tree used as a repoussoir on the left are all typical landscape elements in the artist's repertoire. Typical as well is the curving diagonal axis that leads the eye from foreground to middle ground.

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