Mountain Valley with a Plateau

Hercules Segers

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Segers, one of the most idiosyncratic printmakers of the seventeenth century, employed traditional techniques towards expressive ends. He worked on each impression of a print as though he were creating a unique painting. He printed this etching in colored inks on paper that was already colored and subsequently painted the printed impression by hand. Such original techniques influenced his compatriot Rembrandt van Rijn.

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