Spring

James Tissot

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

For this narrow, vertical composition, Tissot drew inspiration from the pillar format of Japanese hashira-e prints. The tight frame emphasizes the figure’s cascading dress, a favorite of the artist, in which he repeatedly dressed his models. The work belongs to a series of personifications of the seasons. Here, the white muslin gown and apple blossoms overhead are the only visual cues that the subject is an allegory of spring. The use of up-to-date costume to signal the season connects the etching and the painting on which it was based to popular fashion plates of the period. Tissot exhibited the two works at Grosvenor Gallery in 1878, a rare instance in which he displayed a painting and its etched version together.

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