An ivy covered ruin

An ivy covered ruin

Francis Towne

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This watercolor likely represents a ruin in Wales, with the inscription and number 57 connecting it to a series that Towne made when he traveled there in 1777. The style is more consistent, however, with his work of the next decade, so the artist must have returned to or reworked an earlier composition, a characteristic practice. Layered colored washes in the trees resemble those in his "The Cascade in the Groves at Ambleside," 1786 (Private Collection), while the massively buttressed medieval ruin overgrown with greenery demonstrates Towne’s engagement with the picturesque.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

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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.