Sardanapale, from "Le Monde Illustré"

Emile Thomas

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The popular illustrated weekly "Le Monde Illustré" published this reproduction of Delacroix’s "The Death of Sardanapalus" (1827; Louvre) when the painting was included in an exhibition of the Société de l’Union des Arts in May 1874. The magazine declared that it believed "it must make known to its readers the most remarkable works currently on view in Paris." A decade after the artist’s death, the painting had come up at auction for the first time the previous year and was purchased by the dealer Paul Durand-Ruel, who lent it to a number of exhibitions in London and Paris.

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