Study of the artist's son, John

Study of the artist's son, John

John Linnell

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Linnell’s intimate sketch captures his twelve-year old son John supporting a large book and dressed in either a student's coat or country smock. The artist’s household at Bayswater, which then lay outside greater London, grew vegetables and kept bees, and those rural pursuits are perhaps referenced by the sitter’s garb, while the twisted pose centered around a large book echoes Michelangelo’s famous Prophets and Sibyls in the Sistine Chapel. Linnell had nine children when he made this drawing in 1835 and worked as a professional portraitist to ensure a reliable source of income, while also producing visionary landscapes.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

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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.