Clearing with a lumber mill

Clearing with a lumber mill

John Middleton

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Middleton belonged to the Norwich School, a loose association of artists with a regional identity led at the outset by John Crome (1768–1821) and John Sell Cotman (1782–1842). A member of the next generation, Middleton painted fine, expressive watercolors before succumbing to consumption at age of twenty-nine. The loose brushwork of "Clearing with a Lumber Mill" is charactertistic of the artist's early work, and the subject suggests a date of 1847. In that year Middleton stayed in London to exhibit at the Royal Academy and British Institution for the first time, then toured Kent with Henry Bright (1810-1873), his teacher and a fellow Norwich artist. At this time he made dated drawings of a lumber yard similar to this one near Tunbridge Wells.

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.