The Ploughman

Edward Calvert

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

In this richly detailed engraving, Calvert conjured an idealized medieval pastoral world. Made in the weeks immediately following Blake's death, "The Ploughman" affirms the artist's vocation, implying a parallel between cutting furrows in the soil and the printmaker's incisions in a woodblock. The print's full title, The Ploughman, or Christian Ploughing the Last Furrow of Life, alludes to Luke 9:62, "No man, having put his hand to the plough and looking back, is fit for the Kingdom of God." As Calvert's farmer looks heavenward, he sees a vision of the Good Shepherd who affirms the value of his work.

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