L'Odalisque

Charles Alexandre Debacq

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This lithograph reproduces Delacroix's painting of the same title that he exhibited at the Paris Salon of 1847, where it was very well received. It was published first in the journal "L'Artiste" on June 27, 1847, but this impression comes from an 1852 publication "Les Peintres vivants," a collection of one hundred prints after living artists. Delacroix had an abiding concern for his legacy and one of the ways he hoped to ensure his reputation was through the circulation of his work in print. The critic Charles Baudelaire recounted that the "liability of painting compared to the solidity of print was one of the constant themes of his conversation."

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