Dar-Thula, from "Illustrated London News"

Frederick James Smyth

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The "Illustrated London News" commissioned this print to inform readers of a significant watercolor shown by Tidey at the New Watercolour Society in 1861. The theme demonstrates the continued significance of Ossian as a poetic source considered a northern equivalent to classical epics by Homer and Virgil. London's watercolor societies offered artists a chance to use the medium with ambition and garner a degree of attention not possible at the Royal Academy. Commenting on Tidey's work, a contemporary critic remarked "The artist has fully entered into the character of this cruel epic...with the wild, gigantesque fancy of a Fuseli....in colour the artist has subdued his [palette] to the grey granite hue of Ossians's poetry."

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