Italianate river landscape

Italianate river landscape

William Taverner

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Taverner was among the earliest British artists to paint ambitiously in watercolor, adopting visual structures previously associated with Italian and Dutch works in oil. This expansive composition across three joined sheets of paper encapsulates his experimental approach. Layers of tone define form, gouache strengthens the foliage, and iron gall ink is applied to the shadows. Aspects of the river scene resemble a stretch of the Thames near Windsor, although the sinuous arrangement and planar buildings recall landscapes by the Italian master Paolo Anesi. Taverner earned his living in London as procurator-general of the ecclesiastical Court of Arches of Canterbury. This freed him from the drudgery of painting country-house views and enabled him to produce watercolors that Paul Sandby and Thomas Gainsborough admired.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

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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.