Design for a memorial to Sir William Myers

Thomas Stothard

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Stothard's design honors a British lieutenant colonel killed at the Battle of Valverde in the Peninsular War. Allegorical figures of Britannia and Fame flank a sarcophagus beneath a plaque, with battle flags above shielding a sinking sun inscribed with Myers' name. If a related carved memorial was ever made, it has not been identified. Made of several joined sheets, the drawing developed in stages with the lower portions made first, and the upper section added after Myers’s death. Below, the ink is warmer and pen work freer, with Britannia and Fame drawn with an elegant classicism close that recalls the early work of John Flaxman, to whom Stothard was close from 1778. The battle flags and stylized sun above represent a cooler, stonier neoclassical style. Stothard's long and productive career encompassed painting, book illustration, etching, china designs made for Wedgwood, and impressive silver presentation pieces. The present sheet comes from a series of commissions he received during the Napoleonic conflict.

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