The New Boy, from "Illustrated London News"

The New Boy, from "Illustrated London News"

George Smith

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

A well-dressed boy is teased in a schoolroom by his new classmates while his mother talks to the master in an adjacent room and a sister peeks around the door to watch the scene. The wood engraving was published in the "Illustrated London News" in August 1859 and the related text notes that George Smith exhibited the related painting at the Royal Academy that summer. Following in the footsteps and David Wilkie and William Mulready, Smith worked in a genre tradition that focused on families and children in everyday circumstances.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The New Boy, from "Illustrated London News"The New Boy, from "Illustrated London News"The New Boy, from "Illustrated London News"The New Boy, from "Illustrated London News"The New Boy, from "Illustrated London News"

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.