St. Paul's Cathedral, from St. Martin's-le-Grand

St. Paul's Cathedral, from St. Martin's-le-Grand

Thomas Girtin

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

In this vibrant rendering of London, Girtin combines lively detail with passages of loose brushwork. The work stands at the midpoint of the artist’s tragically short career, balanced between his early achievements as a topographical watercolorist and the masterly abstracted landscapes to come. Working outdoors, in the street where he lived, the twenty-year-old established graphite perspective lines, then added gray wash shadows, layers of color, figures, and details. The foreground moves from deep shadow, at left, to red-brick facades glowing in the late afternoon sun. Sir Christopher Wren’s magnificent classical dome embodies the sublimity toward which the artist aspired, while the carts, horses, street-sweeper, dog, lamplighter, and pedestrians represent the native picturesque out of which his genius grew.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

St. Paul's Cathedral, from St. Martin's-le-GrandSt. Paul's Cathedral, from St. Martin's-le-GrandSt. Paul's Cathedral, from St. Martin's-le-GrandSt. Paul's Cathedral, from St. Martin's-le-GrandSt. Paul's Cathedral, from St. Martin's-le-Grand

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.