Study of a Seated Woman Seen from Behind (Marie-Gabrielle Capet)

Adélaïde Labille-Guiard

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Producing portraits in miniature, pastel, and oil, Labille-Guiard was admitted to the Académie Royale in 1783, one of the few women in eighteenth-century France to earn this honor. This rare example of her draftsmanship shows her vigorous technique in trois crayons (red, black, and white chalks) as akin to that of her husband, François-André Vincent (1746–1816). She depicts here her devoted student Marie-Gabrielle Capet (1761–1818), who lived in the couple's household, staying on even after Labille-Guiard's death in 1803 to care for Vincent until his death in 1816, two years before her own.

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