The Orphans, from "Illustrated London News"

The Orphans, from "Illustrated London News"

William Luson Thomas

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

A young Dutch boy, whose nationality is indicated by wooden clogs, comforts a younger sister near a grave above a coastal village. William Luson Thomas’s wood engraving appeared in the "Illustrated London News" in 1867, based on a drawing or painting that Kate Swift showed at the Society of Female Artists that year—the society had been founded in 1857 to bolster the prospects of women artists who could exhibit at the Royal Academy but were not admitted to membership, or allowed to study at the Academy Schools (Swift exhibited at the Society 1857–1901 and at the Academy 1861–80). Primarily a watercolorist, Swift focused on genre subjects. In 1869 she married the Dutch artist Christoffel Bisshop and moved to Scheveningen in the Netherlands, but continued to exhibit in London.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Orphans, from "Illustrated London News"The Orphans, from "Illustrated London News"The Orphans, from "Illustrated London News"The Orphans, from "Illustrated London News"The Orphans, from "Illustrated London News"

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.