View of Ariccia, Italy

Jonathan Skelton

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Jonathan Skelton played a pioneering role in the development of British landscape drawing as one of the first artists to depict "Grand Tour" subjects during a residence in Italy. This example of his work shows a site in the countryside near Rome. The artist had arrived in Italy by early 1758 and, a year later, died tragically at the age of twenty-four. Skelton worked in the eighteenth-century tradition of "tinted drawing," first sketching a subject in graphite, then strengthening the lines with pen-and-ink, and finally adding subtle monochromatic watercolor washes. His accomplished draftsmanship and methods, which included sketching out-of-doors, anticipate those of Paul Sandy, who is generally regarded as the father of British watercolor painting. Interestingly, Skelton was largely unknown to modern scholars until a cache of his drawings and letters came to light in 1909.

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