The Athletic Club at Bowling Green

Harry Fenn

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

An inscription on the back of this drawing suggests that it was made to illustrate an article on Port Sunlight, the idealistic worker community established outside Liverpool in England. Born outside London, and trained as a wood engraver for the Dalziel Brothers, Fenn moved to New York in 1857 and became a prominent illustrator known for his landscape imagery. He contributed to the lavishly illustrated "Picturesque America," published by D. Appleton (1870–72), followed by "Picturesque Europe" (1875–79), and "Picturesque Palestine, Sinai and Egypt" (1881–84). The present drawing dates from his later career, when he often contributed to periodicals such as "Century Magazine," "Harper’s Weekly," "Harper’s Monthly" and "Scribner’s."

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