Windsor from Datchet

William Collingwood Smith

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This watercolor looks towards Windsor Castle from a village east and downstream along the Thames. The castle's northeast tower rises in the distance as cattle graze on left bank and a moored skiff attests to evening calm below a setting sun. Collingwood Smith received early instruction from James Duffield Harding, then exhibited at the Royal Academy before joining the Society of Painters in Water-Colours (the "Old Water-Colour Society") as an associate in 1843. He was elected to full membership in 1849 and served the society as treasurer from 1854 until his death. He also ran a busy art school at Wyndam Lodge, on Brixton Hill in southwest London, offering instruction to amateurs, professionals, and military and naval officers. Herbert Richardson Houghton, who donated this drawing to the Museum in 1878, was a New Yorker who likely acquired the work in London.

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