The Father's Leave-Taking

William Holman Hunt

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This print portrays Hunt’s second wife, Edith, holding their daughter Gladys. The pose recalls a Madonna of Humility, and the intense realism is characteristically endowed with symbolic resonance—after losing his first wife to sudden illness the artist was deeply aware of life’s fragility. The contrast between the grand classical column and domestic interior glimpsed through a doorway also echoes Renaissance nativities.

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