Bacchanale

Jean Michel Moreau le Jeune

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Moreau was from a family of artists and began his training young, entering the studio of Louis Joseph le Lorrain. He was granted a prestigious series of appointments in the royal household and is responsible for a prodigious output of works on paper, chronicling court events and creating designs for fashion plates and book illustrations. His work was frequently exhibited at Salons both before and after the French revolution. Unlike many of his surviving drawings, this large watercolor bacchanal was likely executed as an autonomous work, rather than as a model for a print.

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