A Quartet of Singers, Lute players, and Bell Ringers Playing in a Tavern by Candlelight

A Quartet of Singers, Lute players, and Bell Ringers Playing in a Tavern by Candlelight

Leonaert Bramer

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This sheet is one of eighty brush drawings on blue paper by the prolific draftsman and painter Leonaert Bramer that belonged to an album that was disbanded and dispersed in the 1980s. The album is known as the Hofstede de Groot album as it belonged to the eminent Dutch art historian Cornelis Hofstede de Groot around 1930. The drawings in this album are among Bramer's earliest known drawings and some of them may have been created on his early trip to Italy (1619-1627). The drawings, diverse subjects from genre to mythology, to religious scenes, were all rendered within rectangular frames drawn on the larger sheet. Their painting-like compositions suggest that they may have been intended as ideas for paintings.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

A Quartet of Singers, Lute players, and Bell Ringers Playing in a Tavern by CandlelightA Quartet of Singers, Lute players, and Bell Ringers Playing in a Tavern by CandlelightA Quartet of Singers, Lute players, and Bell Ringers Playing in a Tavern by CandlelightA Quartet of Singers, Lute players, and Bell Ringers Playing in a Tavern by CandlelightA Quartet of Singers, Lute players, and Bell Ringers Playing in a Tavern by Candlelight

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.