Mountainous landscape with travellers (Scene on the river Pellene Achaia)

Mountainous landscape with travellers (Scene on the river Pellene Achaia)

Hugh William Williams

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Williams was dubbed "Grecian Williams" after travelling to Greece in 1816 and, two years later, publishing an influential description of his journey. Here, he used sepia ink and wash to show a group of men climbing a steep river gorge in Achaia, a region in the northwest Peloponnese. While the artist may have experienced the rugged terrain personally, topographical accuracy was not his primary concern. Instead, he placed the explorers within a romantically conceived landscape framed by wind-tossed trees.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Mountainous landscape with travellers (Scene on the river Pellene Achaia)Mountainous landscape with travellers (Scene on the river Pellene Achaia)Mountainous landscape with travellers (Scene on the river Pellene Achaia)Mountainous landscape with travellers (Scene on the river Pellene Achaia)Mountainous landscape with travellers (Scene on the river Pellene Achaia)

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.