The Yule Log in India — Bringing in the Ice, from "The Graphic" Christmas Number

Charles Roberts

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Victorian periodicals often published color wood-engravings at Christmas as a bonus for subscribers–such prints required multiple blocks and careful printing, so were more expensive to produce. Focused on seasonal themes, these prints were intended to be saved. This example shows a British family in India celebrating the holiday with a log shaped block of ice rather than a yule log. As a servant wheels in the ice in a barrow, children and adults celebrate and anticipate frozen treats. Adrien Marie, a student of Isodore Pils, had traveled widely and became a successful illustrator for both the French and British press.

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