Mrs. Papendiek and Her Son

Sir Thomas Lawrence

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This delightful early Lawrence portrait drawing came to the Museum from trustee George Dupont Pratt. In 1789, the twenty-year-old artist was working at Windsor Castle on a full-length oil of Queen Charlotte when the opportunity arose to make this more informal image of the queen’s dresser, Charlotte Papiendiek. Deputized by the queen to model apparel represented in the oil, Mrs. Papiendiek wears a pearl bracelet centered on a miniature that George III gave to his wife at their wedding. It was Mrs. Papiendiek’s own fashionable hat, however, that caught Lawrence’s attention on this occasion—a beribboned confection adorned with lace that falls around her face. The inclusion of the sitter’s two-year-old son Frederick leaning against her knee increases the sense of intimacy.

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