Man's Head

Jonathan Richardson Sr.

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Jonathan Richardson Senior was a leading early eighteenth-century portrait painter who also wrote influential texts on art and connoisseurship and formed an important collection of Old Master drawings. Early in his career he rarely made preparatory studies, but in his fifties he began regularly to portray himself and his son in works that suggest an appreciation for drawing as an aesthetic pursuit. Once he retired from painting, Richardson made such drawings daily. This example may be a lightly sketched self-portrait but could also be a copy.

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