A clump of trees

Thomas Gainsborough

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

While living in Ipswich in the 1750s, Gainsborough made a group of intensely wrought graphite drawings of trees, including this sheet, which comes from a sketchbook. The artist is now admired for his abstract approach to landscape, but this work demonstrates how careful observation of nature provided a foundation for later compositions. Here, a brushed layer of gray wash provides a tonal foundation for graphite strokes applied to describe foliage. Varied pressure on a porte-crayon (a drawing tool designed to clamp small pieces of graphite) allowed him to delineate delicate leaf clusters and indicate light falling from the left.

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