Figure in a classical landscape

Figure in a classical landscape

Alexander Cozens

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This drawing reflects Cozens’s concern with classical landscape imagery and includes many of the motifs he first encountered during an extended period of study in Italy around 1746. A river winds back from a foreground bank where a large tree frames the image to the right, with a figure in classical dress standing beyond. In the background, an Italianate villa is nestled at the foot of a hill and partly screened by bushes, rocks, and a smaller tree. Stylistically, the drawing resembles Cozens’s work of the 1760s, when the artist was an eager and successful participant in London’s first public art exhibitions. With its precise and tightly controlled linework in brown ink, this enigmatic drawing may have been such an exhibition piece.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Figure in a classical landscapeFigure in a classical landscapeFigure in a classical landscapeFigure in a classical landscapeFigure in a classical landscape

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.