Cock Fight

Arthur Melville

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Nearly twenty years after he visited the Middle East, the Scottish painter Melville depicted a cockfight he had seen in Muscat, Oman, in 1881. Associated with the progressive "Glasgow Boys," the artist avoided romantic Orientalism and created muted effects using a distinctive "blottesque" technique. Inspired by the tonal paintings of Whistler and the formal qualities of Japanese prints, he applied large droplets of color, manipulated with sponge and brush, to suggest seated onlookers grouped around a colorfully dressed standing man. The two roosters that face off at center are rendered with abbreviated strokes of black and red touched with white. While the figures seem to melt together, the architectural setting provides structure, with a striking arched opening receding into shadows pierced by a bright rectangular window.

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