The Brown Havannah Pine

The Brown Havannah Pine

George Brookshaw

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Life-size color-printed representations of fruits in a series titled "Pomona Britannica" (Fruits of Britain) crowned George Brookshaw’s career. The series included tropical varieties such as pineapples, together with grapes, peaches and cherries with all specimens shown grown near London at Hampton Court, Kensington Palace and gardens belonging to the Prince of Wales at Blackheath. Brookshaw began as a successful painter and japanner of furniture for wealthy clients then switched course and became a botanical draftsman, teacher and publisher of instructional manuals. Issued between 1804 and 1812, the plates in "Pomona Britannica" demonstrate a well-honed aesthetic sense with fruits often placed against dark grounds and delicately colored. Stipple engraving is here combined with the relatively new tonal process of aquatint.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Brown Havannah PineThe Brown Havannah PineThe Brown Havannah PineThe Brown Havannah PineThe Brown Havannah Pine

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.