The Rainbow

Félix Bracquemond

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

After his initial efforts of about 1873 (22.15.3 and 22.15.4), Bracquemond returned to color printmaking in the 1890s with this remarkable and experimental work. A female nude seated on the bank of the Seine reaches above her head to gather the end of a rainbow, which falls at her side like moiré cloth. Paris appears in the far distance, while the other end of the rainbow merges with billowing smoke from an industrial landscape on the opposite side of the river. For the final print, the artist intended to combine an etching printed in black ink with this color lithograph. This impression shows the lithography only, without the refining detail of the etched line.

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