Penton Hook
Sir Francis Seymour Haden
An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art
Seymour Haden was the unlikely combination of a surgeon and an etcher. Although he pursued a very successful medical career, he is mostly remembered for his etched work as well as for his writings on etching. He was one of a group of artists, including James McNeill Whistler (1834–1903) and Alphonse Legros (1837–1911), whose passionate interest in the medium led to the so-called etching revival, a period that lasted well into the twentieth century. The extolling of etching for its inherent spontaneous qualities reached its pinnacle during this time. While the line of the etching needle, Haden wrote, was "free, expressive, full of vivacity," that of the burin was "cold, constrained, uninteresting," and "without identity." In this work, an ancient, hollow tree leans over a river, as a man rests against the trunk and a boy fishes at left. Harrington's early catalogue describes this as the first state "with the dry-point touches in various parts of the plate...a series of oblique parallel lines facing the seated figure at the base of a tree-trunk." [p. 35] Schneiderman's later, more detailed, analysis designated it as state five of six, with "light drypoint in the foliage and in space between the riven stems and, most notably, a series of oblique parallel lines near face of figure seated near tree [and] some wear of the drypoint during printing." [p. 167]
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.