Portrait of Auguste Rodin

Eugène Carrière

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Before moving to Paris to study painting, Carrière apprenticed as a lithographer. Even after achieving acclaim as a painter in the early 1880s, he continued to produce commercial lithographs to earn a living. However, it was only in 1890 that he finally adopted lithography as an artistic medium. His sophisticated knowledge of the technique enabled him to achieve the characteristic sfumato style of his paintings in print through subtle wiping and scraping. This print adapts a painted portrait that Carrière made of his dear friend the sculptor Auguste Rodin (Musée Rodin). It is a testament to the close relationship of the two artists, who shared aesthetic priorities and collected each other's works.

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