Girodet and His Students

Girodet and His Students

Alexandre-Marie Colin

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Many of Anne Louis Girodet-Trioson’s students took up the new medium of lithography, employing it to further their teacher’s reputation by reproducing his work. Colin’s homage to Girodet conveys the male-dominated space of the studio. Although many of the artists depicted have been identified, their names are unfamiliar to us today as few achieved great distinction. Colin presents himself in the front row. The lithographic lines comprising his portrait appear darker than the rest, particularly next to the faintly sketched peer immediately to the right. Colin did find success, primarily as a portrait painter. He won multiple medals at the Paris Salons and later became professor of drawing at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Nîmes.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Girodet and His StudentsGirodet and His StudentsGirodet and His StudentsGirodet and His StudentsGirodet and His Students

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.