A Lion, Full Face, August 30, 1841

Eugène Delacroix

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Delacroix recorded numerous visits to the Jardin des Plantes in Paris, where he particularly enjoyed sketching the lions in the menagerie. He described the experience as a revitalizing one that encouraged his attention to nature: "How necessary it is to . . . stick one’s head out of doors and try to read from the book of life that has nothing in common with cities and the works of man." This 1841 sketch includes color notations: "slightly brown" referring to the mane and "light yellow" closer to the nose.

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