Two Costume Designs or Portrait Studies. Woman with a Bird and a Woman with Binoculars

Two Costume Designs or Portrait Studies. Woman with a Bird and a Woman with Binoculars

Anonymous, French, 18th century

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Page with two round portraits in blue and green tones. The left portraits shows a woman in a frontal pose, gazing towards the right and holding a bird in her left hand. She wears a corseted dress and a straw hat with ribbons and feathers. The right portrait shows a woman in profile facing left and holding binoculars in her left hand. She wears a corseted dress and a large bonnet. A gilt frame is indicated on the left side of the portrait. In between the two roundels are sketches of a harp, a bird cage, and a garland containing flowers and ribbons.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Two Costume Designs or Portrait Studies. Woman with a Bird and a Woman with BinocularsTwo Costume Designs or Portrait Studies. Woman with a Bird and a Woman with BinocularsTwo Costume Designs or Portrait Studies. Woman with a Bird and a Woman with BinocularsTwo Costume Designs or Portrait Studies. Woman with a Bird and a Woman with BinocularsTwo Costume Designs or Portrait Studies. Woman with a Bird and a Woman with Binoculars

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.