Landscape with rising sun, December 1, 1828, 8:30 a.m.

Joseph Michael Gandy

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Gandy made his name as a visionary architect and art theorist but here demonstrates his skills as a plein-air watercolorist. The loose, evocative study of clouds is comparable to works famously made by John Constable during the 1820s. Like other artists with an empirical bent, Gandy carefully recorded the date and time of day on this sheet at upper right in graphite as "SW / Dec 1/28 ½ 8 M"—indicating December 1, 1828, at 8:30 under a southwest wind. Morning or evening are not specified but the scene must be a sunrise, because the sun sets long before eight in England in December. The drawing was once part of an album that belonged to Gandy’s friend and supporter, the sculptor Sir Richard Westmacott.

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