Asses Drinking, from "Illustrated London News"

Asses Drinking, from "Illustrated London News"

Henry Linton

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Ansdell's Spanish subject won a prize at the Glasgow Art Union in 1857 and was reproduced as a full-page wood engraving in the "Illustrated London News." Accompanying text praised the artist as: "an animal painter [who] has long commanded a high renown...[and] lately prosecuted his art in newer and larger fields…In Spain, he has studied character, climate, and colour, in scenes equally novel and suggestive, presenting a mine of wealth to the eye of the artist; and all these essentials to pictorial effect he has admirably combined in his picture entitled "Asses Drinking." Linton was one of the finest wood engravers who worked for the "Illustrated London News."

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Asses Drinking, from "Illustrated London News"Asses Drinking, from "Illustrated London News"Asses Drinking, from "Illustrated London News"Asses Drinking, from "Illustrated London News"Asses Drinking, 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.