Spring (Le Printemps)

Auguste Rodin

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Rodin learned the drypoint technique—a printmaking method that involves drawing with a needle directly on a metal plate—from the artist Alphonse Legros during a visit to London in 1881. The motif of a female figure whose head is encircled by putti appeared first on a vase Rodin designed for the Sèvres porcelain factory, where he worked from 1879 to 1885, though the composition here is most similar to a related porcelain plaque in the collection of the Iris & B. Gerald Cantor Center for Visual Arts at Stanford University.

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