Study for Tree Trunks and Lane

Study for Tree Trunks and Lane

John Crome

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Crome made this drawing to create a soft-ground etching, using it to transfer the image to a printing plate. A leader of the Norwich School (artists based near that Norfolk town who developed a distinctive local landscape style), the artist was one of the first in 19th-century Britain to use etching as an expressive medium, anticipating the Etching Revival.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

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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.