The Dead Hare

The Dead Hare

Wenceslaus Hollar

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Hollar cleverly adapted this composition from a hunting still life by Pieter Boel, using it to show off his dexterity with the medium of etching through his rendering of fur, feathers, and skins. Images of hunting trophies were popular in the second half of the seventeenth century. Artists treated them with a heightened sense of realism and often portrayed them at life-size in paintings, as Boel did.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

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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.