Lunch at the Fork (Le Dejeuner à la Fourchette)

Lunch at the Fork (Le Dejeuner à la Fourchette)

Johann Gottfried Schadow

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Lunch at the Fork is an important example of Schadow’s work as a caricaturist and watercolorist. This is one of two small-scale watercolors that Schadow refers to in his diary as the beginning of a series of designs for the publisher Carl Weiss. This and its pair, Napoleon's Retreat, were turned into etchings in 1813. They depict Napoleon’s horrific retreat from Russia, a subject with personal meaning for Schadow, who himself had French troops billeted in his house in Berlin. Schadow’s handling is extremely lively and the colors remarkably fresh creating a lightness and energy that belie the subject matter.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Lunch at the Fork (Le Dejeuner à la Fourchette)Lunch at the Fork (Le Dejeuner à la Fourchette)Lunch at the Fork (Le Dejeuner à la Fourchette)Lunch at the Fork (Le Dejeuner à la Fourchette)Lunch at the Fork (Le Dejeuner à la Fourchette)

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.