A young man leaning on a fence

William Alexander

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Alexander is best known for travelling to China between 1792 and 1794 as part of the official group that accompanied Lord Macartney’s embassy to Peking. This charming study of a young man in the English countryside likely dates before his departure, and resembles works by Julius Caesar Ibbetson, who is believed to have taught Alexander at the Royal Academy Schools which the young artist attended after moving to London from Maidstone in 1782. Once he returned from China in 1794, Alexander focused on illustrating published accounts of the journey, and turned sketches of the orient into finished compositions for Royal Academy exhibitions. In 1808, he became the British Museum’s first keeper of prints and drawings.

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