Draped Model

Albert Joseph Moore

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This drawing of a woman in classical robes likely was made in preparation for a fresco that Moore executed in 1866 at Claremont, a Georgian house near Salford, outside Manchester. Now lost, the painting was one of three overdoors in the octagonal hall and showed four women drawing water from a fountain. The model's pose, with a hand on her hip and the other at her chin, is one of waiting. The artist made numerous nude and draped studies for the commission; in the present sheet he focused on the model's voluminous translucent draperies. He used black and white chalk to capture shadows and highlights against the brown middle tone of the paper. Moore's decorative approach to classical subjects is characteristic of the Aesthetic Movement and influenced James McNeill Whistler, who began to make similar pastel studies on brown paper about this time.

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