My Garden in St. John’s Wood

My Garden in St. John’s Wood

James Tissot

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Inspired by a similar structure in the Parc Monceau in Paris, Tissot installed a cast-iron colonnade in his London garden. He employed it frequently as an architectural setting in his paintings and prints. Here, void of figures, it features as the primary motif—a rare pure landscape within Tissot’s oeuvre. The artist included an impression of this etching in his exhibition at the Grosvenor Gallery in 1879, suggesting that he was particularly satisfied with the print and considered it an independent work.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

My Garden in St. John’s WoodMy Garden in St. John’s WoodMy Garden in St. John’s WoodMy Garden in St. John’s WoodMy Garden in St. John’s Wood

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.