La Sortie de bébé

Marcellin Desboutin

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Desboutin here portrays his second wife, Dominica Bellardi, adjusting the blankets around the couple’s third son, Jean-François, known by the nickname Tchiquine, asleep in the carriage. Older brother André stands proudly at the handle, ready to push. The artist’s delicate drypoint technique conveys the soft and varied textures, particularly of the textiles, throughout the composition. Like other members of the Impressionist circle with whom he exhibited, Desboutin rejected the period conventions of child portraiture to represent his family in the informal circumstances of their daily life.

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