Wooded Landscape with Cows beside a Pool, Figures and Cottage

Thomas Gainsborough

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Pairs of creatures punctuate the moonlit landscape, arranged as if to illustrate the progress of love: at the left, two cattle nestle together; in the center, a human couple reclines companionably on a log; and at the right, a standing figure leans pensively against a staff, accompanied by a loyal hound. The apparently simple scene-probably made in the later 1770s, given its refined drawing style-was hard-won. Gainsborough completed this soft-ground etching using a variety of techniques: he strengthened lines in the foliage with an engraver's sharp burin; formed the smooth light areas in the sky with aquatint; and preserved the white color of the paper on the cow's back by stopping-out. Yet, despite such virtuoso passages, Gainsborough eschewed technical perfection and simply ignored the defects on his copper printing plate that created the lateral lines resembling creases in the sheet.

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