Portrait of a young woman seated

Portrait of a young woman seated

Thomas Gainsborough

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Soon after moving to Bath in 1760, Gainsborough made this delicate chalk drawing as he worked on a life-size oil portrait of amateur singer and musician Ann Ford. Ford’s private performances took the town by storm, and the artist intended his painting to attract national attention. Soft black chalk lines describe a seated pose, diamond-shaped pendant earrings, and a dark neck ribbon. The facial features are lightly indicated, since the artist intended to develop these later, directly on the canvas. The elaborate silk gown adorned with lace cuffs and looped satin ribbons was of greater interest. Trained in the French manner, Gainsborough established a fluid graphic web that delights in the abstract possibilities of the fashionably dressed female form.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Portrait of a young woman seatedPortrait of a young woman seatedPortrait of a young woman seatedPortrait of a young woman seatedPortrait of a young woman seated

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.