A Stocking Full (published in "Harper's Weekly," January 4, 1879)

Thomas Nast

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Santa Claus rests in a stocking suspended from a mantle while smoking an old-fashioned long-handled pipe. In 1862, during the dark days of the American Civil War, Nast combined European traditions of St. Nicholas with folk images of elves from his native Germany to create the enduring image of a jolly gift-giver that we now so firmly associate with Christmas. This proof of a wood engraving that Harper's Weekly issued January 4, 1879 shows how small Nast's Santa was. The published version of the image adorned on a page of holiday advertisements.

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