View of Chepstow, Wales

John Scarlett Davis

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This elevated vista shows the River Wye from the Forest of Dean, with the Welsh town of Chepstow in the distance. Davis uses the curves of the river to carry the eye toward its estuary. Broad washes of green and brown suggest foreground foliage, while the middle ground is rendered in paler tones, and tiny sailboats near the horizon help to convey a sense of expansive space. Davis was a child prodigy who won a medal from the Society of Arts in London at age eleven, then studied at the Royal Academy Schools, and pursued a career painting portraits, landscapes and watercolor views. He specialized in representing art gallery interiors and his watercolors share the sensibility of his contemporary Richard Parkes Bonington, contrasting freely rendered passages of wash with precise details.

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