The Wood-cutters

The Wood-cutters

Sir Hubert von Herkomer

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Part of the series titled "Modern Artists" that Virtue published 1880–82, this print is based on an 1874 watercolor shown by Herkomer the Exposition Universelle, Paris in 1878. A printed summary report by the United States Commissioners described the drawing as, "workmen turning the trunk of a tree they have felled...admirable in its action and drawing, and very pleasing in its clear gray tones." The costumes place the scene in Bavaria, the German state where Herkomer was born and returned as a young artist to find subjects.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Wood-cuttersThe Wood-cuttersThe Wood-cuttersThe Wood-cuttersThe Wood-cutters

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.