A seated fat lady

Sir Edward Burne-Jones

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

To entertain friends and family, Burne-Jones produced quickly-drawn caricatures throughout his career. The images often were opposite to the ideal forms found in his paintings. When the artist shared rooms with William Morris at the start of their careers, he often contrasted his own extreme thinness to his friend's rotundity. At once fascinated and repulsed by obesity, the artist centered many caricatures on large overdressed society women and non-ideal female nudes. This example belonged to Maria Zambaco, a sculptor and member of London's Greek community with whom Burne-Jones had an extended affair. The pose echoes one found in the artist's painting "The Lament" (1866, tempera, William Morris Gallery, Walthamstow).

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