Hadleigh Castle: Large Plate

David Lucas

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

In 1829, Lucas became involved in a project with John Constable to execute a select group of Constable’s landscape paintings in mezzotint, a tonal engraving medium in which the plate is roughened with a tool called a rocker so that its burr retains the printing ink to varying degrees. Constable saw the early proofs and requested that Lucas bring him more examples: "Bring me another large ‘Castle,’ or two, or three, for it is mighty fine, though it looks as if all the chimney sweepers in Christendom had been at work on it and thrown their soot bags up in the air." This large plate was first published in 1849, following Constable’s death, and is based on a painting that Constable associated with "melancholy grandeur," a mood which is echoed here before the addition of figures and animals in later trials.

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