Portfolio of Characters and Types

Portfolio of Characters and Types

Samuel Marie Clédat de Lavigerie

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Clédat de Lavigerie worked primarily as a costume designer in Paris in the 1870s and 80s. This portfolio of drawings portrays an eclectic variety of male subjects including popular fictional characters, national types, clowns, mimes, and medieval saints. The artist presents them somewhat uniformly, each wearing a black jacket, and distinguished only from the neck up, demonstrating his ability to visually express a character with minimal means.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Portfolio of Characters and TypesPortfolio of Characters and TypesPortfolio of Characters and TypesPortfolio of Characters and TypesPortfolio of Characters and Types

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.