Château de Lourdes

William Callow

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

On June 6, 1836, the twenty-four year old Callow set out from Paris on a two-month walking tour. By early July, he reached the Hautes Pyrénées, and would spend three days around Lourdes, reveling in the wild mountain scenery–at that time, the small town was dominated by a medieval fortress and not yet associated with miraculous healing. Copley Fielding had encouraged Callow’s early talent for watercolor in London and, after the young artist moved to Paris in 1829 to work for Newton Fielding, he became friends with Thomas Shotter Boys and developed a style indebted to Richard Parkes Bonington. This sketch, made on site, demonstrates the artist’s early style characterized by calligraphic lines and luminous washes.

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