Study of a female nude, seated

George Richmond

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This sensitively drawn figure study likely dates to the later decades of Richmond’s career and demonstrates his ongoing commitment to life drawing, perhaps as a form of relief from his demanding career as a portraitist. Even when inundated with commissions to depict members of the Victorian elite, Richmond never forgot his youthful association with the Ancients, an idealistic brotherhood of artists led by Samuel Palmer, or his study trips to Italy in 1837 and 1840. Evident here is his lifelong admiration for the nudes of Michelangelo and Titian and his devotion to the study of the human body, sensuously and confidently described using red and black chalk.

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