La Prière (The Prayer), from "Illustrated London News"

William Luson Thomas

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

A French servant or country girl here uses a simple chair to practise her faith. Gustav Pope worked in a variety of styles and was influenced by the second wave of Pre-Raphaelitism. He depicted literary and mythological themes, portraits, landscapes and idealized young women. "La Prière" was shown at the British Institution in 1867 (no. 367), then engraved for the "Illustrated London News" by William Luson Thomas. Founded in 1842 as the world’s first weekly news magazine, this periodical regularly published examples of contemporary art.

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