William Pitt the Elder

William Hoare

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

In 1737 William Hoare returned to England from studies in Rome and settled in the spa town of Bath. That gave him access to leading patrons without having to compete with Sir Joshua Reynolds and Allan Ramsay, who dominated the London portrait market. He made this lively chalk drawing of William Pitt when the latter was forty-seven and had temporarily abandoned politics and retired to Bath to nurse his recurrent gout. Hoare posed his sitter carefully, underplaying his prominent nose and dressing him as a prosperous gentleman. Rapid strokes of chalk suggest a velvet jacket and simple white neck-stock while delicate touches around the brows and eyes convey concentrated intelligence. Two years after the portrait was made, Pitt was elevated to Secretary of State and leader of the House of Commons and in those positions guided Britain to success in the Seven Years’ War.

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