Snowdon from Llyn Nantlle, North Wales

George Fennel Robson

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Every summer, Robson explored the wilder corners of Britain and sketched subjects he could develop into finished watercolors for London exhibitions. He completed this drawing one year before his death. Its uncluttered composition is anchored by Mount Snowdon, the highest peak in Wales, and it reflects the influence of Robson's teacher, the artist John Varley (1778-1842). Beautifully applied washes have been enlivened with a few telling details. Tones progress from a warm sunlit foreground inhabited by two shepherds to dappled, foliage-covered hills to cool shadows defining the distant mountain. The critic John Ruskin (1819-1900) wrote that Robson's finest watercolors were "serious and quiet in the highest degree [and] certain qualities of atmosphere and texture in them have never been excelled."

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