The Drawing Academy at the Felix Meritis Society in Amsterdam

The Drawing Academy at the Felix Meritis Society in Amsterdam

Reinier Vinkeles

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Felix Meritis Society opened in Amsterdam in the late eighteenth century to promote the arts and sciences. (Its name translates as "happiness through merit.") The society’s drawing classroom was outfitted for study from live models. It featured a wire frame affixed to the ceiling from which ropes could be hung to suspend a backdrop and support models’ arms while they posed for extended periods. In this scene, artists gather to sketch from a live model and a skinned cadaver.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Drawing Academy at the Felix Meritis Society in AmsterdamThe Drawing Academy at the Felix Meritis Society in AmsterdamThe Drawing Academy at the Felix Meritis Society in AmsterdamThe Drawing Academy at the Felix Meritis Society in AmsterdamThe Drawing Academy at the Felix Meritis Society in Amsterdam

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.