
Two Costume Designs or Portrait Types and a Sketch
Anonymous, French, 18th century
An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art
Page with two round portraits in gouache and a third round sketch in graphite and ink. The left portrait shows a woman turned slightly toward the left. She is wearing a red jacket with a fichu and a creme corseted dress. She wears a large straw hat with pink bows, a blue flower, and green leaves. The woman in the portrait on the right turned towards the left, but has turned her had towards the viewer. She wears a corseted, blue and yellow striped dress with yellow trimming and buttons. She has a large white hat with blue stripes and ribbons. The graphite sketch above the two gouache portraits shows a bust of woman who wears an oversized bonnet-style hat. The portrait is framed and part of the frame is decorated by a string of garlands.
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.