Central Park (Summer)

Julius Bien

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This birds eye view looks down on Central Park from above the hill north of the Lake. The middle ground is anchored by Bethesda Terrace, with exaggeratedly tall banners marking the boat landing. The prominent fountain is not yet topped by the "Angel of the Waters" sculpture, which would be added in 1873. The mall extends beyond the terrace and ends in an east-west ground-level drive which later would be replaced by the sunken 65th Street transverse. Further south the Park is largely undeveloped. Bachmann placed a balloon in the sky at the horizon, perhaps as a reference to the high point of view in this print which was, however, achieved through imaginative construction.

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