Vallée de Glenfinlas (Glenfinlas Valley)

Richard Parkes Bonington

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Scottish lords in a hunting party move through a mountain valley. The image echoes a ballad by Sir Walter Scott that laments the death of chief Ronald and tells how he left the group with his hounds to tryst with a sweetheart, then encounters her ghost. The work comes from a series of lithographs Bonington made in 1826 after drawings by Pernot titled "Picturesque Views in Scotland."

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