The Met exhibits its English drawings

31/1/24 - Acquisitions and exhibition - New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art - The Metropolitan Museum, to the left at the top of its main staircase, has a large space, leading in particular to 19th-century French painting, where it exhibits works of graphic art, prints and drawings, in rotating, non-catalogued displays. Until March 5, 2024, "British Vision, 1700-1900", a selection of English drawings, is on show, demonstrating the extent to which this collection has been greatly enriched over the last thirty years, first under the impetus of George Goldner, the department’s director, and then his successor Nadine Orenstein.

Although the museum already had some British sheets, these were not very numerous and concerned almost exclusively the big names, the best-known ones such as Joseph Mallord William Turner. It’s amusing to note that among the works presented, this artist is absent! With the exception of a few drawings acquired in the 1930s, the aim of the exhibition is to show the main acquisitions made since the early 1990s.
This allows us to discover works of the highest quality, often by lesser-known artists. The collection has thus been diversified to show the full richness of British drawing, particularly in the 19th century, with a large number of watercolors.

Many of these sheets will eventually be included in our database of museum acquisitions since 2001 (the implementation of which, long announced, is close at hand), but we will take this opportunity to reproduce here a few of them, entered in the museum since 2019, and which we had not yet mentioned. The only exception is that by John Frederick Lewis, which was published here with the Wrightsman bequest; seeing it in real life enabled us to see how close the artist seemed to Delacroix’s art.
Although there is no catalog for this exhibition, the Metropolitan’s website offers a remarkably well-done database of his works, which provides detailed information on each of them (and from which we have drawn much of the information below).

1. David Cox (1783-1859)
St. Eustache, Paris
Watercolor and graphite - 33.7 × 25.8 cm
New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Photo: Didier Rykner

See the image in its page

In 2019, the museum purchased a watercolor by David Cox (ill. 1), dated 1826, from the London dealer in British drawings and watercolors Guy Peppiatt Fine Art Ltd. The painting is of particular interest for the history of Paris, as it shows the church St. Eustache, on the left, before the demolitions caused by the construction of Victor Baltard’s Halles, in what is now the rue Rambuteau.
A Birmingham-born painter, David Cox is one of the most prolific artists in the field of watercolors, of which the Met now owns ten examples.

2. George Price Boyce (1826–1897)
Newcastle at Night from the Rabbit Banks, Gateshead, 1864
Watercolor and gouache - 10.1 × 20.8 cm
New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Photo: The Metropolitan Museum of Art (public…