Landscape with hills and a lake

William Gilpin

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

In his writings, Gilpin encouraged his readers to seek the picturesque in nature, which he defined as "that peculiar kind of beauty which is agreeable in a picture." Nature was to be viewed and experienced like a landscape painting, with emphasis on composition, the harmony of light and dark masses, and overall effect rather than a precise description of topography. In this drawing of hills around a lake, with a small building precariously perched on a cliff, picturesqueness is achieved through the rough application of broad and bold washes of monochrome ink. In his Three Essays, displayed nearby, Gilpin wrote "Picturesque composition consists in uniting in one whole a variety of parts; and these parts can only be obtained from rough objects."

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