A Parkland View at Dusk

William Leighton Leitch

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Bold shadows from the late-day sun stretch across the landscape. Deft touches of green, brown, blue, and ochre watercolor create a parkland lined with ancient trees, and fluid washes in similar tones suggest the rolling earth and crepuscular sky. The slightly rough texture of the woven paper heightens the sense of atmosphere, seeming to give presence to the air. Although this drawing was once attributed to Peter de Wint, it bears at the lower right the studio stamp of William Leighton Leitch, who signed and dated a second version of this composition in 1879. A generation younger than De Wint and David Cox, Leitch carried the tradition of naturalistic landscape watercolor painting into the second half of the nineteenth century; he served both as drawing master to Queen Victoria and as vice-president of London's New Society of Painters in Water-Colours.

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