The Declaration, from "Illustrated London News"

William Luson Thomas

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The dress of these lovers meeting by a wooded pond places them in 17th-century Brittany and the print is based on a painting that Frederick Goodall exhibited at Leeds in 1868. Thirty years before the artist had come to public notice when he showed watercolors at the Royal Academy describing the new Rotherhithe Tunnel under the Thames designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel. Goodall later became known for middle-eastern subjects whose authentic details relied on studies made in Egypt in 1858 and 1870, and he also painted European historical and genre subjects, including a series set in Brittany. He became an Associate of the Royal Academy in 1852, but also sent paintings to exhibitions in the north of England to attract wider patronage. When he painted "The Declaration," the artist was a bachelor (he would married Alice Tarry in 1872), so the subject may have had some personal resonance.

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