Portait of Villeau

Portait of Villeau

Jean-Baptiste Isabey

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Jean-Baptiste Isabey (1767-1855) was a French painter and print maker specialized in portraits and miniatures. He enjoyed official favour from the time of Louis XVI to Napolean III. Isabey studied under Jacques-Louis David (1748-1825) and received one of his first portrait commissions from Marie Antoinette (1774-1792). The genre painter and printmaker Eugène Isabey (1804-86) was his son and student.

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.