Capel Carrig, Caernarvonshire

John Sell Cotman

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This etching of a Welsh chapel demonstrates Cotman’s lifelong fascination with the irregularity of old buildings. Gothic arches screen a small side chapel near neatly arranged rows of heavy benches. Broken stone slabs in the left foreground disrupt the orderly interior. In 1824 Cotman had begun a series of etchings titled Liber Studiorum, which paid tribute to J.M.W. Turner’s famous series of 1807–9. Where Turner employed mezzotint engravers to add tone to his etched outlines, Cotman’s choice of soft-ground etching enabled him to create his prints without assistance.

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