Eight Bells: The Boy at the Helm, from "Illustrated London News"

Eight Bells: The Boy at the Helm, from "Illustrated London News"

Hamilton Macallum

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Macallum moved to London from Glasgow, after training in a merchant's office for what his father hoped would be a commercial career in India. Instead, the young man escaped to London in 1864 to study at the Royal Academy Schools. This print suggests that he had achieved a solid reputation by 1876. An accomplished sailor, the artist used a small yacht to sketch subjects in western of Scotland and Devon. Eight bells is the nautical term for twelve o'clock and we here see a youth left to tend the tiller at noon, presumably as his shipmates eat lunch. The slack line indicates a light breeze and little danger.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Eight Bells: The Boy at the Helm, from "Illustrated London News"Eight Bells: The Boy at the Helm, from "Illustrated London News"Eight Bells: The Boy at the Helm, from "Illustrated London News"Eight Bells: The Boy at the Helm, from "Illustrated London News"Eight Bells: The Boy at the Helm, from "Illustrated London News"

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.