Miriam Watching the Finding of Moses in the Bulrushes

Miriam Watching the Finding of Moses in the Bulrushes

Simeon Solomon

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

As the youngest child in a Jewish family that produced three artists, Solomon began to draw at an early age and was encouraged by Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Favoring Old Testament subjects, he sketched this composition one year after exhibiting his first oil at the Royal Academy. The story of the infant Moses is told from an unusual perspective, with the focus placed on his teenage sister Miriam. Hidden behind rushes, she watches an Egyptian princess who gestures as she notices the basket containing the baby. We cannot see him, and Miriam’s tense posture leaves the story’s outcome unresolved.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Miriam Watching the Finding of Moses in the BulrushesMiriam Watching the Finding of Moses in the BulrushesMiriam Watching the Finding of Moses in the BulrushesMiriam Watching the Finding of Moses in the BulrushesMiriam Watching the Finding of Moses in the Bulrushes

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.