The Family of Sir James Hunter Blair, 1st Baronet

David Allan

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Allan used watercolor and graphite to make this detailed study of a Scottish family in preparation for a large portrait in oil. Sir James Hunter Blair, his wife, and nine of their twelve children stroll through a landscape near Portpatrick in western Scotland, with Dunskey House, Wigtownshire, an estate gained through his wife’s inheritance, prominent in the background. This work, the first by Allan to enter the Museum’s collection, demonstrates how, after eight years in Italy, he adapted his training to the taste of his Edinburgh patrons. The friezelike arrangement of figures and the distinctive line of gamboling children recall classical precedents and reflect Allan’s interest in dance—he sketched tarantellas in Naples and Highland reels in Scotland. The combination of ancient and contemporary elements and deliberate naivete echo the innovations of English contemporaries such as George Stubbs.

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