Indian temple

George Chinnery

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

In the early nineteenth century, the British East India Company’s growing presence in India encouraged London-trained artists to travel to the subcontinent. Chinnery left England in 1802 to seek portrait commissions in Madras, Calcutta, and Dacca (present-day Dhaka, Bangladesh). This lively sketch of a small Indian temple, falling into ruin and buffeted by a passing squall, likely dates to his residence in Dacca between 1808 and 1812. In that period the artist stayed with the British East India representative Sir Charles D’Oyly; this work was once housed in an album assembled by a collector who knew both D’Oyly and Chinnery.

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