Landscape with cattle in Weißbach on the Rhön

Carl Wagner

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Rapid strokes of pen and brush capture swaying trees and rustling leaves. Touches of yellow suggest the movement of golden light—perhaps that of the late afternoon sun. The cows in the distance inject a slightly disorienting sense of scale that suggests some warping of space or simply reflects the artist’s attempt to keep up with the frolicking creatures. Wagner frequently went into the woodlands of Germany to draw from direct observation, inscribing many of his sheets, as here, with the precise date and place of execution.

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