Broken Tackle

Sir Hubert von Herkomer

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This view shows a young man holding a fishing rod near an expanse of river near Landsberg am Lech, Bavaria. Originating from that region, Herkomer's family had moved briefly to America then settled in England in 1857. Despite early poverty, he achieved success as a painter, watercolorist, and illustrator and also worked as an etcher and mezzotint engraver. He became a Royal Academician in 1890, then joined the Royal Watercolour Society and Royal Society of Painter-Etchers, and taught at Oxford as Slade Professor of Fine Art between 1885 and 1894. As a printmaker, Herkomer mastered a range of techniques with "Broken Tackle" demonstrating his delight in the expressive potential of etching. The subject pays tribute to the land of his birth–a region to which he often returned from the 1870s.

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