Oak forest with a pig

Anonymous, British, 19th century

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

British nineteenth-century viewers would have recognized these mature oaks as symbols of sturdy national character and, more concretely, a resource crucial to the country's famous "wooden walls"--the navy that protected the coasts. This composition by an unknown draftsman recalls precedents by the Dutch artist Antoine Waterloo (1609-1690), and the soft draftsmanship indicates a possible connection to the Oxford drawing master John Malchair (ca. 1770-1812). A pig searching for acorns in the foreground adds a note of whimsy.

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