Hosannah!, from "Dalziels' Bible Gallery"

Simeon Solomon

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

In 1862 the Dalziel Brothers, prominent Victorian wood engravers, approached a group of British artists with plans for a lavishly illustrated Bible. Work began immediately, but the sixty-seven prints of Old Testament themes were not published until 1881. Solomon came from a prominent Jewish family and intended his six designs to celebrate his heritage. Hosannah! shows a temple musician during the Feast of Tabernacles and was inspired by a line in Psalm 149, "Praise for God’s goodness to Israel." Solomon admired Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Edward Burne-Jones, and this early work places him in Pre-Raphaelitism’s second wave.

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