Figures on a beach in northern France

Figures on a beach in northern France

Thomas Shotter Boys

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Boys’s artistic vision was shaped by Richard Parkes Bonington, whom he met in Paris in 1823. Their friendship encouraged Boys to shift his attention from engraving to watercolor. After Bonington’s tragic early death in 1828, Boys moved back to England and made this watercolor around the time he returned to France two years later. He found the subject on the northern coast, perhaps in Normandy, and made changeable weather a focus. Dark swift rain clouds threaten to drench figures dressed in local costume who stand near a beached sailing vessel. While the handling and approach to form display a distinct individuality, the basic conception continues to pay tribute to Bonington.

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.