Drawing from Life, from "Illustrated London News"

William Hollidge

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

In a humble Scottish interior, a boy just arrived home from school, has thrown off his coat and sketches a sleeping cat on his slate. The image suggests that his early passion may one day drive a mature artist and echoes incidents from the early lives of famous artists—Vasari for example recorded that the Florentine painter Cimabue discovered Giotto as a shepherd boy sketching his flock on a rock, then took him on as an apprentice. Published in the "Illustrated London News" in 1870, this wood engraving was designed by Henderson who lived and worked in Scotland, became president of the Glasgow Arts Club and exhibited at the Royal Scottish Academy and Royal Glasgow Institute of Fine Arts. The engraver Hollidge first worked for London periodicals, then went to Paris in 1871 and engraved for "L'Univers Illustré."

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