Interior

Jean Honoré Fragonard

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This print is one of a group of four the arist made in 1778, as he was introducing his sister-in-law, Marguerite Gérard to the rudiments of the technique. It features the full array of country "types" that recur in Fragonard’s work: barefoot children, buxom young women, and bearded old men. Because no clear narrative links the figures, the print has traditionally been referred to by the vague title Interior. Gérard made her own etching after the same lost model, presumably a brown wash drawing by her brother-in-law.

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