Antonio Canova

Paul Adolphe Rajon

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Rajon, an acclaimed reproductive etcher, made this print to accompany an article in the Gazette des Beaux-Arts on the sale of the collection of the Marquis de la Rochebousseau at the Hôtel Drouot in Paris in March 1873. The author describes the exhibition preceding the sale as an important opportunity for Parisians to see works by masters of the British school, who were generally not well represented in French public collections. Jackson made the painting on which the etching is based, now at the Yale Center for British Art, while visiting Rome with his compatriot and fellow Royal Academician, the sculptor Francis Chantrey (1781–1841), who commissioned the portrait of the great neoclassical sculptor Canova (1757–1822).

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