A figure resting in a ruined tower

John Sell Cotman

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Cotman may have created this evocative image of an isolated, ruined tower during a sketching session, or as a teaching tool. For much of his career, the artist supported himself as a drawing master in his home town of Norwich and then, from 1834, as Master of landscape drawing at King's College School in London. During regular tours in England, Wales and Normandy, he sought out medieval architecture and drew forms in silhouette, emphasizing ornamented doors and windows. In this romantic image, a lone figure rests on the steps of a decayed structure whose cliffside position seem precarious. A counterpoint of dark and light moves from a small window that pierces a bright stone wall, into the shadowed interior of the ruin. Small birds soaring at right accentuate scale and the void of the adjacent valley.

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