New Year (Nieuwjaar)
Theodorus van Hoytema
An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art
Van Hoytema was the most significant Dutch designer and lithographer at the end of the nineteenth century. Still beloved in Holland today for his animal-themed work, these pieces were equally admired in his time. Part of the Art Nouveau movement in Holland, Van Hoytema's Christmas Eve and New Year were produced as a matched pair in an edition of 200. Christmas Eve depicts two owls in a snowy landscape with a flock of swans flying overhead. A border of slanted owls and another of holly leaves decorate the bottom of the image. New Year includes a host of birds, a white peacock gloriously opens its tail feathers observed by three geese; the two owls from the previous print make an appearance on the bottom as though they are flying away from the New Year. The connecting figures of a turkey, a large dark peacock, and a rooster create a large curve that enframes the white peacock. Both works show the influence of Japanese artwork on the compositions. Hoytema combines in these works the use of lithographic crayon to define lighter areas and lithographic ink to create the darks as well as the mosaic-like patterning on the turkey and owls in the New Year.
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.