Waltham Abbey, Essex

Peter De Wint

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

De Wint’s masterful control of a watercolor here evokes trees, water and sky, as well as architecture. One of the oldest monasteries in England, Waltham Abbey is situated about sixteen miles north of London. Dissolved by Henry VIII, all that survives today of the once extensive complex is a twelfth-century church founded by Augustinian canons, its tower added 1556–58, and fragments of a fourteenth-century gatehouse. De Wint brought these elements closer together than they are in reality, and reduced the impact of secular encroachments by screening or omitting them. The entrance gate, at the left end of a bridge, is pierced by two gothic arches framed with moldings, with the sixteenth-century church tower standing against the sky beyond. Contemporary life is evoked by figures in the water and leaning over the bridge who wield long poles to clear weed or some other obstruction.

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