Sunday at Chelsea Hospital, from "The Graphic," vol. 3

Sir Hubert von Herkomer

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Herkomer contributed many scenes from contemporary life to the early issues of the weekly newspaper "The Graphic." Here he depicts a service in the chapel of the Royal Chelsea Hospital, a residential home for retired British soldiers in London. The artist later wrote of the subject that, "The idea was to make every man tell some different story, to be told by his face, or by the selection of attitude." This illustration focuses on two foreground figures, one of whom checks for the pulse of a companion who has quietly died during the service. The poignant subject was made into a large painting in 1875 (now Lady Lever Art Gallery, Port Sunlight), that won Herkomer immediate fame. Exhibited first at the Royal Academy of Arts in 1875, it was then awarded a gold medal at the Exposition Universelle, Paris in 1878.

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