Hungry Birds, from "The Graphic" Christmas Number

Hungry Birds, from "The Graphic" Christmas Number

Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Bauerle

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Born in Germany, Bauerle emigrated to Ohio, learned to engrave from an uncle in Cincinnati, then returned to Stuttgart to pursue a career as a children's portraitist and genre painter (his patrons included Prince of Hohenlohe-Langenburg, Queen Victoria, Edward Prince of Wales). The present work demonstrates his ability to portray children and taste for sentiment, using a punning title to connect the youngsters eating bread and birds seen through the window. "The Graphic" chose the subject for one of the color-printed wood engravings they published annually as a premium for readers at Christmas, this example issued in 1882. The periodical had been founded in 1869 by William Luson Thomas, a successful wood engraver, publisher and social reformer, and was intended to rival the "Illustrated London News."

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Hungry Birds, from "The Graphic" Christmas NumberHungry Birds, from "The Graphic" Christmas NumberHungry Birds, from "The Graphic" Christmas NumberHungry Birds, from "The Graphic" Christmas NumberHungry Birds, from "The Graphic" Christmas Number

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.