Croquet

James Tissot

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

In this print—based on a painting of the same title in the Art Gallery of Hamilton, Ontario—Tissot stages a scene of leisurely recreation in his London garden, identifiable by the distinctive colonnade surrounding the fountain in the background. Confronting the viewer, a girl stands on a bright lawn among croquet stakes and balls, balancing a mallet behind her back. The game had arrived in England from France in about 1860. The figure kneeling in the background appears to be the same model in a different pose.

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