Tree Trunks and Lane

John Crome

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

A leader of the Norwich School (artists based near that Norfolk town who developed a distinctive local landscape style), Crome worked in oils, watercolors, and as a drawing master, and is remembered as an expressive etcher. From 1809, he created rustic images derived from plein-air sketches that anticipate the Etching Revival. Unpublished during Crome's lifetime, sets titled "Norfolk Picturesque Scenery, Consisting of Thirty-One Etchings" were issued in 1834 to benefit his widow.

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