Sebastian Gomez Discovered by His Master Murillo, At Work, from "Illustrated London News"

Walter George Mason

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

We are here invited to share the surprise of the Spanish seventeenth-century painter Murillo, as he discovers the artistic talent of a young enslaved mulatto in his household. Hans Christian Anderson recounted Gómez’s story in 1838 in “The Unknown Painter,” likely inspiring Wehnert’s image. Born in London, to German parents, the artist was educated at Göttingen University then trained in Paris and was interested in subjects concerned with both history and art. Mason engraved Wehnert's watercolor for the “Illustrated London News,” the world’s first weekly news magazine, founded in 1842.

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