A Stream near Clovelly, North Devon

John Middleton

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Middleton belonged to a small group of artists who contributed to a late flowering of the Norwich School of landscape painting around 1850. The artist was just twenty when singled out by the Norfolk Chronicle as "one of the most rising young artists of the day...[distinguished by a]...brilliancy of colouring, charming alteration of light and shade, admirable drawing and grouping." His career was cut sadly short by consumption, leading to his death at age twenty-nine but, in the preceding decade, he produced sparkling works such as this freely washed rendering a country stream bordered by trees made during a summer tour of North Devon in 1850.

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