The Rev. William Atkinson, wearing a broad-brimmed hat

The Rev. William Atkinson, wearing a broad-brimmed hat

George Romney

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

William Atkinson was a curate at Selside, a parish near Kendal in Cumbria where Romney lived between 1757 and 1762. Naturally talented, largely self-taught, and here near the start of his career, the artist would have been the portraitist of choice for gentry in that northern county. His paintings of that period favored broad effects, and the simple graphite strokes used here to describe the coat, with its wide old-fashioned collar and cuffs, are similar in character. More detail was used for the face and the right hand, which holds a walking stick. In a related oil painting, Romney showed Atkinson indoors without hat and cane, leaning on a pile of books.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Rev. William Atkinson, wearing a broad-brimmed hatThe Rev. William Atkinson, wearing a broad-brimmed hatThe Rev. William Atkinson, wearing a broad-brimmed hatThe Rev. William Atkinson, wearing a broad-brimmed hatThe Rev. William Atkinson, wearing a broad-brimmed hat

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.