Flower study

John Jessop Hardwick

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Petunias, wild roses, thistles, and rosehips are displayed here as though growing among moss and fallen logs. The artist’s close focus and careful delineation demonstrate the influence of William Henry Hunt, a contemporary whose still-life technique layered color over a white gouache ground to achieve luminosity—paralleling an oil technique associated with early Pre-Raphaelite artists. Hardwick used that manner to fine effect in this work. As a student, he won a watercolor prize at Somerset House’s School of Art, then worked as an engraver for the Illustrated London News. From the 1860s, he exhibited watercolors of fruit and flower subjects at the Royal Academy and Royal Society of Painters in Water-Colours, gaining associate membership in the latter in 1882.

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