Portrait of Jean Honoré Fragonard

Tiburce de Mare

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This etching is based on a portrait drawing by Jacques Antoine Marie Lemoine (1751-1824) depicting Fragonard holding a porte-crayon. The drawing dates to 1797 and was owned by Hippolyte Walferdin, the great 19th-century collector of Fragonard's drawings. The print was likely made in 1880, at the time of Walferdin's estate sale, when his collection would have been on public view. In the drawing, Lemoine has placed fragonard against a flat backdrop. In the etching, Tiburce de Mare has added a stormy mountainous coastline.

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