A Quest for a Cousin, from "Illustrated London News"

A Quest for a Cousin, from "Illustrated London News"

James Abbott Pasquier

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Pasquier was a skilled watercolorist who designed prints for British periodicals and illustrated books. Here he represents a young woman accompanied by her father or uncle who seeks a lost relative who may have worked as an artist's model. They stand in a painter's studio and examine a painting that shows a beautiful girl arranging her hair.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

A Quest for a Cousin, from "Illustrated London News"A Quest for a Cousin, from "Illustrated London News"A Quest for a Cousin, from "Illustrated London News"A Quest for a Cousin, from "Illustrated London News"A Quest for a Cousin, 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.