Spring

Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Roman girls gather flowers in a field for the fiesta to celebrate the start of the year. The central figure in a white tunic holds an anemone and the field is scattered with daffodils and asphodels. Based on an oil on canvas, dated April 9, 1877 (destroyed in World War II), derived from studies made in the garden of the villa Pamphili or Borghese, Rome. Commissioned by Pilgeram & L. H. Lefèvre, the painting was exhibited at the Royal Academy of Arts, London in 1877 (no.117).

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