The Silent Councillor, from "The Portfolio"

The Silent Councillor, from "The Portfolio"

Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

A Roman youth lies on a marble bench and speaks to a sculpture of a sphinx, the sea represented in the distance. The print was published in “The Portfolio, An Artistic Periodical...,” edited by Philip Gilbert Hamerton, that often included articles about artists and actively promoted printmaking.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Silent Councillor, from "The Portfolio"The Silent Councillor, from "The Portfolio"The Silent Councillor, from "The Portfolio"The Silent Councillor, from "The Portfolio"The Silent Councillor, from "The Portfolio"

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.