Grave Monument with Cross, No. 745

Grave Monument with Cross, No. 745

Alexander Maxwell

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Alexander Maxwell designed and made grave monuments for New York area clients in the mid-nineteenth century (a fine example is a Butterfield family mausoleum of ca. 1875 at Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx). They likely were related to the marble and granite suppliers Alexander Maxwell & Co. of East Canaan, Connecticut, who provided marble for New York City Hall in 1838, and for a hundred columns used in an extension of the United States Capitol, Washington DC in 1860. This drawing comes from a group of designs for private memorials.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Grave Monument with Cross, No. 745Grave Monument with Cross, No. 745Grave Monument with Cross, No. 745Grave Monument with Cross, No. 745Grave Monument with Cross, No. 745

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.