A CENTENNIAL ALBUM

Drawings, Prints, and Photographs

The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin Winter 2017
A CENTENNIAL ALBUM
Drawings, Prints, and Photographs

Nadine M. Orenstein and Jeff L. Rosenheim

with Stephen C. Pinson

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

The Met’s quarterly Bulletin program is supported in part by
the Lila Acheson Wallace Fund for The Metropolitan Museum
of Art, established by the cofounder of Reader’s Digest.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, Winter 2017
Volume LXXIV, Number 3
Copyright © 2017 by The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
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Front cover: detail of Karl Friedrich Thiele after Karl Friedrich
Schinkel, Design for “The Magic Flute”: The Hall of Stars in the
Palace of the Queen of the Night, Act 1, Scene 6, 1847–49
(see page 43). Back cover: detail of Hiroshi Sugimoto, Avalon
Theatre, Catalina Island, 1993 (see page 42). Inside front cover:
detail of Joseph Mallord William Turner, The Lake of Zug, 1843
(see page 41). Inside back cover: detail of Odilon Redon,
Armor, 1891 (see page 15). Page 4: detail of Correggio, The
Annunciation, ca. 1522–25 (see page 18). Page 9: detail of Lewis
Carroll, St. George and the Dragon, 1875 (see page 44).
Photographs of works in The Met collection are by the
Imaging Department, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, unless
otherwise noted. Additional credits: © Berenice Abbott. Image
© Metropolitan Museum of Art: p. 46; copyright © The Estate
of Diane Arbus. Image © Metropolitan Museum of Art, photo
by Eugenia Tinsley: p. 36; © 2016 Artists Rights Society (ARS),
New York. Image © Metropolitan Museum of Art: p. 19; © 2016
Banco de México Diego Rivera Frida Kahlo Museums Trust,
Mexico, D.F. / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Image
© Metropolitan Museum of Art: p. 22; © 2016 The Estate of
Roy DeCarava, Courtesy of The Roy and Sherry DeCarava
Foundation. Image © Metropolitan Museum of Art: p. 30;
© Succession Marcel Duchamp / ADAGP, Paris / Artists Rights
Society (ARS), New York 2016. Image © Metropolitan Museum
of Art: p. 48; © Nan Goldin. Image © Metropolitan Museum of
Art: p. 12; © Dorothea Lange Collection, Oakland Museum of
California. Gift of Paul S. Taylor. Image © Metropolitan Museum
of Art: p. 23; © 2016 Succession H. Matisse / Artists Rights
Society (ARS), New York. Image © Metropolitan Museum of
Art: p. 31; Image © Metropolitan Museum of Art, photo by
Eugenia Tinsley: p. 16; © The Lisette Model Foundation, Inc.,
1983. Image © Metropolitan Museum of Art: p. 25; © Nicholas
Nixon, courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco. Image
© Metropolitan Museum of Art: p. 15; © 2016 Georgia O’Keeffe
Museum / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Image
© Metropolitan Museum of Art: p. 34; © 2016 The Estate of
Edward Steichen / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.
Image © Metropolitan Museum of Art: fig. 8, p. 19; © Thomas
Struth. Image © Metropolitan Museum of Art, photo by Peter
Zeray: p. 40; © Hiroshi Sugimoto, courtesy Fraenkel Gallery,
San Francisco. Image © The Metropolitan Museum of Art,
photo by Eugenia Tinsley: p. 42.
The entry for Léon Gérard’s Leonardo da Vinci, Drawing for
Christ in “The Last Supper” (see page 18) was adapted from
The Waking Dream: Photography’s First Century (New York:
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1993), p. 291 (entry by
Maria Morris Hambourg).
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DIRECTOR’S NOTE
This Bulletin marks the centennial of the founding
of The Met’s Department of Prints and, by extension,
reflects on a century of collecting works on paper at
The Met. At various times in the Museum’s history, works
on paper—prints, drawings, and photographs—have
all come under the auspices of the same department.
This intertwined story speaks to the close relationship
among these works, which often overlap in terms of
artist, subject, and purpose. As the authors discuss in
their introduction, these diverse collections comprise
many singular masterpieces, but also a variety of other
materials that were preparatory or documentary in
nature or designed to be reproduced and disseminated
to a wide audience.
William M. Ivins, the visionary founding curator of the
Department of Prints, addressed this essential char-
acteristic of works on paper when he remarked that a
print collection “cannot be formed solely upon Yes or No
answers to the question: Is it a work of art?” More than a
trove of masterpieces, Ivins argued, the collection must
be like a library, filled with great works but also enriched
by a variety of other items whose chief significance
may be a startling technical innovation or, perhaps, a
reflection of the turbulent times in which it was made.
Fortuitously, Ivins’s notion of a comprehensive repository
also included photographs—a concept not necessarily
shared by other print curators at the time—and it was
under his tenure that some of The Met’s best-known
photographs entered the collection. That inclusive
philosophy informed much of The Met’s collecting of
works on paper for the next one hundred years, resulting
in an astonishing diversity of artists, genres, and media,
from sketches and cartoons for paintings to theater sets
and illustrated maps.
Arranged as a provocative series of pairings—one
drawing or print with one photograph—this Bulletin
invites the reader to find connections and divergences
between works of art that are seldom seen together.
Ranging in date from the fifteenth century to the pres-
ent day, they are by turns famous and obscure, poignant
and humorous, scientific and literary, realistic and
imaginary. Some reveal clues to how an artist might have
composed another work of art; others provide glimpses
of a lost masterpiece or a vanished way of life.
The pairings were selected by Nadine M. Orenstein,
Drue Heinz Curator in Charge, Department of Drawings
and Prints, and Jeff L. Rosenheim, Joyce Menschel
­Curator in Charge, Department of Photographs, along
with Stephen C. Pinson, Curator, Department of Photo­
graphs, based on suggestions from members of their
respective staffs, who also researched or wrote many of
the entries: Stijn Alsteens, Carmen B ­ ambach, Malcolm
Daniel, Douglas S. Eklund, Mia Fineman, Russell Lord, Mark
McDonald, Constance McPhee, Laura Muir, Meredith
Reiss, Allison Rudnick, Beth Saunders, Femke Speelberg,
and Perrin Stein. Their insights build on the commitment
and knowledge of a century’s worth of discerning cura-
tors: in addition to Ivins, these include Jacob Bean, who
founded the Drawings Department in 1960, and Maria
Morris Hambourg, who founded the Department of
Photographs in 1992. Mention should also be made of
Chairman Emeritus George R. Goldner, who over twenty-­
one years helped build the collection with great energy
and connoisseurship and initiated the immense task of
making it available online. We are equally grateful to the
many collectors and donors whose contributions helped
make The Met one of the world’s leading centers for the
study, exhibition, and conservation of works on paper.
Thomas P. Campbell
Director, The Metropolitan Museum of Art
100 YEARS OF COLLECTING DRAWINGS,
PRINTS, AND PHOTOGRAPHS
Nadine M. Orenstein and Jeff L. Rosenheim
This Bulletin celebrates the splendid variety of works on
paper in the collections of The Metropolitan Museum of
Art. The occasion is the centennial of the founding of
the original Department of Prints, in 1916, from which
the two distinct departments we have today—Drawings
and Prints, and Photographs—eventually emerged. With
remarkable foresight, the Museum’s founding curator of
prints, William M. Ivins, collected masterpieces by such
artists as Albrecht Dürer, Rembrandt van Rijn, and Fran-
cisco de Goya alongside equally important photographs
by William Henry Fox Talbot and Thomas Eakins. He was
also the first curator at The Met to collect contemporary
art, including significant works by Edward Hopper (fig. 1),
Alfred Stieglitz, and Martin Lewis. To mark the anniver-
sary of these collections, we have prepared a selection
of works from both departments that speak to each
other either visually—through their form, function, and
1. Edward Hopper (American, 1882–1967), Evening Wind, 1921. Etching; plate, 7 × 81⁄4 in.
(17.6 × 21 cm). Harris Brisbane Dick Fund, 1925 (25.31.7)
technical finesse—or by virtue of their complementary
subject matter. This romp through our vast holdings thus
offers not a traditional selection of highlights but instead
an unexpected and rarely seen cross section of works
on paper ranging from the sublime to the quirky: from
Correggio, Edgar Degas, and Julia Margaret Cameron to
furniture pattern books and baseball cards.
Works of art on paper can be rare masterworks
of art history—original and experimental—but also
referential and, essentially, reproductive. In that regard,
drawings, prints, and photographs have long been
able to encapsulate the wider world and bring it closer
to home. People have prayed to them, traded them,
drawn on them, mailed them, read them, learned from
them, and even eaten them. As Ivins remarked in a 1917
address to the Museum’s Trustees, prints “touch life
intimately at so many points and in so many ways that
2. William Henry Fox Talbot (British, 1800–1877) and probably
Sebastiano Tassinari (Italian, 1814–1888), Album di disegni
fotogenici, 1839–40. Photogenic drawings, 111⁄4 × 83⁄4 in.
(28.5 × 22 cm). Harris Brisbane Dick Fund, 1936 (36.37)
5
 often it is difficult to say that a print which should have
an undoubted and honorable position in any well-
rounded collection has a distinct artistic value. Many
times technical innovations of the most startling and
important kind are first found in original prints of little
or no artistic value.”1
Since works on paper are often inexpensive to
produce and collect and, because of their generally
modest size, easy to circulate and store, they are truly
cross-­cultural objects. Sixteenth-­century Netherlandish
prints have been found pasted into manuscripts pro-
duced in Turkey just decades later. British photograms
of botanical specimens were folded and mailed to
Italy just weeks after the birth of photography was
announced to the public, in early 1839 (fig. 2). Curators
of works on paper have thus traditionally acquired for
their collections examples of high as well as “low” art,
from drawings and prints by the old masters to book
advertisements (fig. 3) to Kodak Brownie snapshots.
3. Arthur Wesley Dow (American, 1857–1922), Modern Art, 1895. Lithograph;
image, 17 7⁄8 × 13 5⁄8 in. (45.3 × 34.6 cm). Leonard A. Lauder Collection of
American Posters, Gift of Leonard A. Lauder, 1984 (1984.1202.35)
6
This predilection (or responsibility) is reflected in Ivins’s
statement to the Trustees, when he laid out a vision
for the newly formed department that is still reflected
in The Met’s collections today: “The print collection . . .
cannot be formed solely upon Yes or No answers to
the question: Is it a work of art? Rather it must be, like
the library of a professor of literature, composed of a
corpus of prints in themselves distinctly works of art,
filled out and illustrated by many prints which have only
a technical historical importance.” Nonetheless, the
Museum’s holdings have been enriched by the results of
centuries of artistic experimentation and achievement.
Hercules Segers’s Plateau in Rocky Mountains (page 39)
confirms the seventeenth-­century artist’s mastery of
classic methods of printmaking as well as his unbridled
innovation; so, too, does Louis Ducos Du Hauron’s Fox,
from about 1870 (page 39), one of the earliest examples
of color photography. Remarkably, both techniques
remain puzzling to scholars.
4. Peter Paul Rubens (Flemish, 1577–1640), Anatomical Studies,
ca. 1600–1605. Pen and brown ink; sheet, 11 × 7 3⁄8 in. (27.8 × 18.6 cm).
Rogers Fund, 1996 (1996.75)

Everything recorded on paper in the ever-distant past
and ever-present future is an integral component of the
wonderful history of drawing, printmaking, and photog-
raphy. Works on paper have recorded humanity’s creativ-
ity and depicted virtually every aspect of the known and
imagined world: plants and animals, cities, anatomy, sex,
art, cooking, celebrations, and war, small tradespeople
and celebrities, science, medicine (fig. 4), and religion.
Drawings, prints, and photographs show us how things
were made and how they function; they document our
worldly pleasures and our existential terrors; and they
honor cultural change through the simple description of
quotidian human existence in all its manifestations, from
youth to old age (figs. 5, 6).
The collections of works on paper at The Met are
also representative of the rest of the Museum’s diverse
holdings and serve to expand our understanding of the
other arts. They often help confirm, question, or deny the
originality, date, and authorship of a work of art. Perhaps
more important, the Metropolitan’s collections of works
on paper include materials that other curatorial depart-
ments would rarely, if ever, collect and accession, includ-
5. Edgar Degas (French, 1834–1917). Self-Portrait, by 1857. Black chalk and
graphite, heightened with white, 113⁄4 × 91⁄8 in (29.8 × 23.1 cm). Bequest of
Walter C. Baker, 1971 (1972.118.207)
6. Degas. Self-Portrait in Library (Hand to Chin), probably 1895. Gelatin silver
print; image 23⁄8 × 31⁄2 in. (5.8 × 8.7 cm), mount 57⁄8 × 43⁄4 in. (15 × 12 cm).
Bequest of Robert Shapazian, 2010 (2010.457.4b)
ing illustrated letters, cartoons and sketches for paintings
and frescoes, maquettes for printed books, mug shots,
visual diaries, illustrated maps, theatrical dioramas (fig. 7),
patent drawings, valentines, postmortem portraits,
playing cards, and even wallpaper.
Many of the works on paper in The Met’s collection
record significant moments in world history, and the
techniques with which they were made allowed for
their almost immediate creation and dissemination. A
photograph by Dorothea Lange, for example, turned
an image of a worker’s strike in San Francisco into an
emblem of the labor movement of the 1930s (page 23).
Works of paper can thus capture time—such as a letter
by Édouard Manet on which he drew two plums from his
garden at Bellevue and then records his concerns about
selling his painting at an exhibition in Ghent (page 35)—
but by the same token they can impose a kind of
timelessness on things that will inevitably change.
Karl Blossfeldt, for instance, gave permanent solidity
to fruit that will unavoidably rot (page 38), while Hans
Hoffmann depicted a prickly hedgehog in a moment of
stillness (page 38).
7
 7. Published by Martin Engelbrecht (German, 1684–1756). Paper Theater
or Diorama of an Italianate Villa and Garden, ca. 1730–56. Etching and
watercolor; sheet 61⁄8 × 77⁄8 in. (15.6 × 19.8 cm). The Jefferson R. Burdick
Collection, Purchase, Jefferson R. Burdick Bequest, 2014 (2014.776)
8. Edward J. Steichen (American, born Luxembourg, 1879–1973),
The Flatiron, 1904. Gum bichromate over platinum print, 187⁄8 × 151⁄8 in.
(47.8 × 38.4 cm). Alfred Stieglitz Collection, 1933 (33.43.43)
Over the years Met curators have often acquired
multiple examples of the same prints and photographs,
knowing that, despite the possibility of exact duplica-
tion provided by these media, in many cases there is a
notable range of quality and effect from one print or
photograph to another. As a printing plate is used, the
plate surface wears down and the quality of the resulting
impressions diminishes; the plate can then be radically
reworked. Likewise, a photographic negative or trans-
parency can be interpreted and printed in endless ways
and then cropped afterward to dramatically change the
shape and effect of the picture, and thus its meaning.
Yet it is the range of these multiple impressions—as
with Edward Steichen’s three versions of The Flatiron
(fig. 8)—that characterizes the world’s greatest public
collections of works on paper, because it is from these
variations that scholars and the general public can
learn about artistic process and intention. Similarly, an
important collection of drawings is composed not just
of highly finished sheets but also those small sketches,
primi pensieri (first thoughts), and cartoons that docu-
8
ment an artist’s method, training, and development of
other works. Correggio’s Annunciation (pages 4, 16), for
­example, is a ­preliminary study for a fresco in a church
in Parma, now severely damaged. The Met’s drawing not
only preserves our knowledge of how Correggio prepared
the fresco, it also helps us to visualize and interpret the
final work.
The Metropolitan Museum’s collection of drawings,
prints, and photographs is an expansive work in progress.
Just one hundred years old, it has slowly become one
of the nation’s greatest repositories of humanity’s
creativity, revealing in its depth and breadth not only the
endless desire to record things as they are but, perhaps
more important, how they might be. As we embark on
a new century of collecting, it is an honor and great
pleasure to consider what The Met has achieved to date.
Note
1. William M. Ivins, address to the members of the Corporation of
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, January 15, 1917, published
in the Bulletin of The Metropolitan Museum of Art 12, no. 2
(Feb. 1917), pp. 23–25.
A CENTENNIAL ALBUM
 Albrecht Dürer (German, 1471–1528). Saint Jerome in His Study, 1514. Engraving,
93⁄4 × 71⁄2 in. (24.6 × 18.9 cm). Fletcher Fund, 1919 (19.73.68)

Saint Jerome, who translated the Bible into Latin (the Vulgate), was traditionally
seen as an exemplar of the Christian scholar. He is seated here in a study typical of
Dürer’s day. He works peacefully at a tilted writing table, while a lion (from whose paw,
according to popular legend, Jerome removed a thorn) and dog slumber in the fore-
ground. The light of the saint’s halo and the sunlight pouring in through the windows
are in perfect equilibrium, while recurrent horizontals in the composition add to the
pervasive sense of repose and harmony. The print is one of Dürer’s three technically
brilliant master engravings known as the Meisterstiche.

10
Jean-Baptiste-Louis Gros (French, 1793–1870). The Salon of Baron Gros, 1850–57.
Daguerreotype, 83⁄4 × 63⁄4 in. (22 × 17.1 cm). Purchase, Fletcher Fund, Joyce F. Menschel Gift,
Louis V. Bell Fund, Alfred Stieglitz Society and W. Bruce and Delaney H. Lundberg Gifts,
2010 (2010.23)

This exquisitely made interior scene, redolent of the luxuriant aesthetics of mid-­
nineteenth-century aristocratic taste, was probably made in the salon of Gros’s Paris
home in the first half of the 1850s. It is a fascinating glimpse of the way daguerreo­
type plates were presented at the time. Unlike American daguerreotypes, which were
commonly enclosed in folding leather or thermoplastic cases, French daguerreotypes
were most often framed and put on the wall. None of the daguerreotypes displayed in
Gros’s salon are known today.

11
 Nan Goldin (American, born 1953). Nan and Brian in Bed, NYC, 1983. Silver dye bleach
print, 20 × 24 in. (50.8 × 61 cm). Purchase, The Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation Gift,
through Joyce and Robert Menschel, 2001 (2001.627)

Like her subjects, Goldin operates in the gap between art and life that is the special
province of the bohemian, where one’s attitude, attire, relationships, and lifestyle are
as carefully constructed and dramatically expressed as in any work of art. From the
mid-1970s to the 1980s, Goldin produced more than eight hundred images that she
originally presented as a slide show with music entitled “The Ballad of Sexual Depen-
dency.” Nan and Brian in Bed, NYC is the artist’s signature piece from this period: a
contemporary vision of alienation and romantic discord set in the photogenic squalor
of New York’s Lower East Side.

John Singer Sargent (American, 1856–1925). Study of a Young Man, Seated, ca. 1895.
Transfer lithograph, reworked in the stone; image 115⁄8 × 8 5⁄8 in. (29.3 × 21.8 cm). Harris
Brisbane Dick Fund, 1946 (46.124)

Sargent developed this moody image of a young male model swathed in a blanket
from a transfer lithograph he exhibited in Paris and London in 1895. In this later state,
he transformed the image by applying tusche (a special oily ink or crayon) directly to
the stone to enrich the darks and then by scratching expressive abstracted patterns
into the shadows.

12
13
14
Nicholas Nixon (American, born 1947. C.C., Boston, 1983. Gelatin silver print, 73⁄4 × 93⁄4 in. (19.6 × 24.6 cm).
Purchase, The Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation Gift, through Joyce and Robert Menschel, 1988
(1988.1000.12)

Best known for The Brown Sisters, a series of photographs of his wife and her sisters made each year
since 1975, Nixon has long been interested in documenting the p ­ hysical manifestations of mortality.
During the early 1980s he made a number of ­portraits in a nursing home in Boston, including this
powerful image of “C.C.” A ­veritable relic, she is as resolute as the time that has ravaged her.

Odilon Redon (French, 1840–1916). Armor, 1891. Charcoal and Conté crayon, 20 × 141⁄2 in. (50.7 × 36.8 cm).
Harris Brisbane Dick Fund, 1948 (48.10.1)

In this fantastical drawing of a helmeted woman in profile, the sitter is rendered strangely mute
by her armorlike covering, made untouchable by its thorny needles. The exact meaning of Redon’s
image is unclear, but it has been thought that the bizarre bondage expresses a subconscious fear of
female sexuality or, conversely, serves as a symbol of female fecundity. Equally important is Redon’s
virtuoso handling of charcoal, which captures the dark velvet quality of the helmet and the pallor of
the woman’s skin.

15
 Louis-Rémy Robert (French, 1810–1882). Alfred Thompson Gobert, 1849–55. Salted paper print from paper
negative, 87⁄8 × 6 5⁄8 in. (22.6 × 16.8 cm). Purchase, Joyce and Robert Menschel, Mrs. Harrison D. Horblit and
Paul F. Walter Gifts, and Rogers Fund, 1991 (1991.1044)

Gobert, who was head of the enameling workshop at Sèvres, is shown here with his head slightly bowed and
his eyes half-closed—in part to help maintain his pose during a long exposure in bright sunlight—as if lost in
thought. The sharp focus on Gobert’s face and the flecks of light and soft massing of shadows, characteristic
of prints from paper negatives, heighten the sense that this portrait is a privileged meditation by Robert on
the interior world of his friend and colleague.

16
Honoré Daumier (French, 1808–1879). Man Reading in a Garden, 1825–79. Watercolor over black chalk, with pen and
ink, brush and wash, and lithographic crayon, 13 3⁄8 × 10 5⁄8 in. (33.8 × 27 cm). H. O. Havemeyer Collection, Bequest of
Mrs. H. O. Havemeyer, 1929 (29.100.199)

Daumier, an artist better known for his printed caricatures, evoked in this watercolor both summer heat and cool
shade. Amid the dappled light, which filters through the trees to engulf the man’s hands and feet, there is a sense
of utter relaxation but also intense concentration.

17
 Correggio (Antonio Allegri) (Italian, active by 1514–1534). The Annunciation,
ca. 1522–25. Pen and brown ink, brush and gray-brown wash, highlighted
with white gouache, squared in red chalk, on paper tinted with reddish wash,
33⁄4 × 6 3⁄4 in. (9.5 × 17.2 cm). Frederick C. Hewitt Fund, 1917 (19.76.9)

This exquisite small sheet is a preparatory study for the badly damaged
fresco originally painted for the Church of San Francesco, Parma (now in
the Galleria Nazionale, Parma). The drawing is highly worked in a rich mixture
of media, with the topmost layer in thick white gouache, anticipating the
brilliant lighting and color of the fresco. The sheet is squared and, although
small, may have been the final design, in which the painter (and perhaps his
patrons) would have been able to visualize much of the final result on the wall.

Léon Gérard (French, active 1857–61). Leonardo da Vinci, Drawing for Christ
in “The Last Supper,” 1857–61. Albumen silver print from paper negative; image
143⁄8 × 101⁄2 in. (36.3 × 26.6 cm), mount 233⁄8 × 16 3⁄4 in. (59.2 × 42.6 cm). Gilman
Collection, Purchase, Denise and Andrew Saul Gift, 2005 (2005.100.51)

The drawing in this photograph is related to the famous figure of Christ

seated at the center of the table in the fresco Leonardo painted of the
Last Supper in the convent of Santa Maria delle Grazie, Milan, from 1495
to 1498. Although the way the image loses itself in the roughly textured
surface suggests that it is the sinopia, or sketch, that underlies the fresco,
it is in fact a preliminary drawing on paper, which was later abraded and
restored. The face is so well known that Gérard’s photograph of this distant
version of it works like a memory; insubstantial as smoke, yet distinct, the
portrait hovers like the face of Christ on Veronica’s veil.

18
Edward J. Steichen (American, born Luxembourg, 1879–1973).
Self-portrait, 1899. Platinum print, 77⁄8 × 3 5⁄8 in. (19.8 × 9.2 cm).
Alfred Stieglitz Collection, 1933 (33.43.1)

In this eccentric self-portrait of the artist as a young dandy,

Steichen seems poised at a threshold, hovering half in and half
out of the frame. Made in Milwaukee before Steichen headed
to Paris in 1900, this photograph was one of three that Stieglitz
bought for five dollars each at their first meeting, saying:
“And I am robbing you at that.” Steichen, nonetheless elated,
confessed to never before having sold a picture for more than
fifty cents. In 1933 the portrait was the first photograph that
The Met accessioned from Stieglitz’s foundational gift of 419
prints from his personal collection.

Käthe Kollwitz (German, 1867–1945). Self-Portrait, Turned

Slightly to the Left, ca. 1893. Pen and different shades of gray-black
ink, 6 5⁄8 × 111⁄2 in. (16.7 × 29 cm). The Elisha Whittelsey Collection,
The Elisha Whittelsey Fund, 2006 (2006.502)

Throughout her career as a draftsperson and printmaker

Kollwitz depicted herself in bold, honest self-portraits. In this
early sheet, she rendered her starkly lit head with deliberate
parallel strokes, indicating areas of shadow and light by loading
her pen with darker and lighter solutions of black ink.

19
 Robert Charles Dudley (British, 1826–1900). View of the Interior
of One of the Tanks on Board the Great Eastern: The Cable Passing
Out, 1865–66. Watercolor over graphite with touches of gouache;
sheet 101⁄2 × 143⁄4 in. (26.6 × 37.5 cm). Gift of Cyrus W. Field, 1892
(92.10.76)
This dramatic interior offers a glimpse of one of the holding
tanks in the hull of the S.S. Great Eastern, designed by Isam-
bard Kingdom Brunel. The world’s largest ship at the time of its
launch, in 1858, the Great Eastern was later used to lay the first
transatlantic telegraph cable; here workers control the outfeed
of cable destined for the ocean floor. Establishing a trans­
atlantic telegraph required repeated attempts over eight years
as well as the support of dedicated financial backers, skilled
engineers, and both the British and United States navies. When
achieved in 1866, the communication link was hailed as one of
the century’s great technological achievements.
20
Robert Howlett (British, 1831–1858). Isambard Kingdom Brunel
Standing Before the Launching Chains of the Great Eastern, 1857
(printed 1863–64). Albumen silver print from glass negative; image
11 × 81⁄2 in. (27.9 × 21.5 cm), mount 143⁄8 × 101⁄2 in. (36.4 × 26.6 cm).
Gilman Collection, Purchase, Harriette and Noel Levine Gift, 2005
(2005.100.11)
More than anyone else of his generation, Isambard Kingdom
Brunel (1806–1859) was the personification of the Industrial
Revolution in Britain. Brunel was a builder of railways, terminals,
tunnels, dry docks, piers, and bridges, but his crowning achieve-
ment was the Great Eastern; measuring 692 feet in length and
weighing 22,500 tons, it was six times the tonnage of any ship
yet built and was propelled by all the technology then available:
screw, paddle, and sail. In Howlett’s photograph Brunel stands
before the giant chains that were wound around huge checking
drums to serve as restraints during the launching.
21
22
Dorothea Lange (American, 1895–1965). Demonstration, San Francisco, 1933. Gelatin silver print,
43⁄4 × 5 3⁄4 in. (12.1 × 14.6 cm). Gilman Collection, Purchase, Joseph M. Cohen Gift, 2005 (2005.100.309)

Following the stock market crash of 1929, Lange increasingly left her studio to ­photograph a rapidly
growing homeless population, mostly migrant workers crowding the streets of San Francisco. This
photograph was most likely made on May Day, observed by many around the world as a celebration
of the international labor movement. A man looks away from the camera, his back to a banner that
identifies his cause. The low viewpoint creates a sense of monumentality, thrusting the worker
against the sky and boldly silhouetting his head. The exclamation point painted on the banner
strikes the same chord as the daggerlike shadow that cuts across it, spearheading the emphatic and
desperate imperative: FEED US!

Diego Rivera (Mexican, 1886–1957). Emiliano Zapata and His Horse, 1932. Lithograph, 21 × 15 5⁄8 in.
(53.4 × 39.5 cm). Harris Brisbane Dick Fund, 1933 (33.26.7)

Emiliano Zapata was one the leaders of the Mexican Revolution, a long-running conflict that began
in 1910. Celebrating Zapata’s legacy as an advocate of agrarian reform, Rivera’s print was made
more than a decade after Zapata’s death, in 1919, and is based on a detail of the artist’s murals at
the Palace of Cortés in Cuernavaca, a colonial town south of Mexico City. Rivera himself was deeply
involved in Mexican politics. He participated in the founding of the Union of Technical Workers,
Painters, and Sculptors in 1922 and later that year joined the Mexican Communist Party.

23
 Jusepe de Ribera (called Lo Spagnoletto) (Spanish, 1591–1652). Drunken Silenus,
1628. Etching with drypoint, engraving, and burnishing; first state of three, 10 3⁄4 × 14 in.
(27.2 × 35.5 cm). Rogers Fund, 1922 (22.67.14)

Regarded as Ribera’s most remarkable etching, this image of Silenus, companion to

the wine god Dionysos, helped the artist establish his reputation far beyond Naples,
where he had worked for most of his life. While being crowned by Pan, Silenus raises
his cup to accept another drink of wine. His action is humorously echoed by the two
infants at right engaged in similar activities, one of whom has passed out.

24
Lisette Model (American, born Austria, 1901–1983). Coney Island Bather, New York,
ca. 1939. Gelatin silver print; image and sheet 151⁄4 × 191⁄4 in. (38.7 × 48.9 cm).
Promised Gift of Doon Arbus and Amy Arbus, 2007

Model captured this camera-loving bather (among her most iconic subjects) on her first
assignment for Harper’s Bazaar, which in 1941 published an alternate image of the same
woman in a standing pose. Model’s photograph served as the somewhat ironic illustration
for a story about Coney Island as a popular bathing spot “where fun is still on a gigantic
scale.” The reclining version, with its “cheesecake” pose, was perhaps too outrageous for
the women’s fashion magazine.

25
 Thomas Eakins (American, 1844–1916). Bill Duckett Nude,
at the Art Students’ League of Philadelphia, ca. 1889. Platinum
print, 91⁄4 × 83⁄4 in. (23.3 × 22 cm). David Hunter McAlpin Fund,
1943 (43.87.20)

In the 1880s and 1890s Eakins explored various artistic and

educational applications of photography, from motion studies
jointly produced with the pioneering Eadweard Muybridge
to an inventory of naturalistic poses referred to as the “naked
series.” In 1886 he was forced to resign as director of the
Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts after outcries arose
against his use of nude male models in women’s classes. A
group of loyal students rallied to his defense, however, and
formed the Art Students’ League of Philadelphia, where
Eakins made several photographic studies of Bill Duckett, the
young companion of Walt Whitman. This enlarged platinum
print displays his masterful fusion of photographic natural-
ism with a decidedly romantic sensibility.

Rembrandt (Rembrandt van Rijn) (Dutch, 1606–1669).

Reclining Female Nude, 1658. Etching, drypoint, and engraving on
Japan paper; sheet 33⁄4 × 63⁄4 in. (9.5 × 17.1 cm). H. O. Havemeyer
Collection, Bequest of Mrs. H. O. Havemeyer, 1929 (29.107.28)

Throughout his career, Rembrandt was fascinated by the

challenge of how to render a dimly lit figure within an almost
entirely dark image. In this beautiful and understated
work, the artist engulfed the model in rich tones, achieving
painterly effects never before seen in printmaking. To do
so, he relied on an ensemble of inventive techniques and
materials, including combinations of velvety drypoint and
dense etched lines, films of ink left on the printing plate, and
golden-toned Japan paper, which lends an underlying warmth
to the dark image.

26
Julia Margaret Cameron (British, born India, 1815–1879).
The Mountain Nymph Sweet Liberty, 1866. Albumen silver
print from glass negative, 141⁄4 × 111⁄4 in. (36.1 × 28.6 cm).
Harris Brisbane Dick Fund, 1941 (41.21.15)

Of the arresting model, Miss Keene, who is the subject

of Cameron’s Mountain Nymph, Sweet Liberty, we know
nothing but her last name. She stares directly at the
camera (and, by extension, the viewer), her hair loose
and her eyes open wide. Filling the frame, she seems
to step out of the picture with a startling sense of
presence to connect psychologically with the viewer.
The photograph takes its title from John Milton’s poem
“L’Allegro,” a celebration of life’s pleasures: “Come, and
trip it as you go / On the light fantastic toe; / And in
thy right hand lead with thee / The mountain nymph,
sweet Liberty.”

Fernand Khnopff (Belgian, 1858–1921). The Offering,

1891. Pastel, graphite, and chalk, 13 3⁄4 × 291⁄2 in.
(34.9 × 74.9 cm). Bequest of William S. Lieberman, 2005
(2007.49.651)

A nude woman makes an offering to a portrait bust on

an altar. She looks out at us, as though our appearance
has interrupted her ritual. Khnopff’s brand of Symbol-
ism mixed an admiration of medieval and Renaissance
imagery with a fascination for the occult, ritual, and the
dream world. The altar here resembles one in his home,
created to revere Hypnos, the Greek god of sleep; his
sister Marguerite was the model for the figure. The blue
cartouche at center is inscribed with a partially effaced
“NEVERMORE”: a quotation from Edgar Allan Poe’s
poem “The Raven.”

27
 Johann Gottfried Schadow (German, 1764–1850). Portrait of the Rabe Children:
Hermann, Age 14, and Edmond, Age 7, ca. 1810. Lithograph, 8 5⁄8 × 131⁄8 in. (21.9 × 33.3 cm).
John J. McKendry Fund, 1995 (1995.6)

Schadow worked primarily as a Neoclassical sculptor; among his many works is the
ornamentation on the B ­ randenburg Gate in Berlin. He was also an early practitioner
of lithography, although for him printmaking was more of a hobby. Schadow created
several lithographic portraits of children, including this one depicting the two sons of
architect Martin Friedrich Rabe. The bright lighting and Schadow’s parallel hatchings,
which follow the forms, create a rendering of the boys that evokes sculpture.

28
Albert Sands Southworth (American, 1811–1894) for Southworth and Hawes
(American, active 1843–63). Students from the Emerson School for Girls, ca. 1850.
Daguerreotype, 61⁄2 × 81⁄2 in. (16.5 × 21.6 cm). Gift of I. N. Phelps Stokes, Edward S. Hawes,
Alice Mary Hawes, and Marion Augusta Hawes, 1937 (37.14.8)

The Boston partnership of Southworth and Hawes produced the finest portrait
daguerreotypes in America for a clientele that included leading political, intellectual,
and artistic figures. This full-plate daguerreotype shows the students of the most
prominent school for young women in Boston, established in 1823 by George Barrell
Emerson, second cousin of the poet and philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson. Although
there are more than thirty figures in the portrait, subtle variations in posture, gesture,
and facial expression, especially among the students seated at center, convey the
presence of vivid and distinct individuals within the group.

29
30
Henri Matisse (French, 1869–1954). “The Knife Thrower,” plate XV from Jazz (Paris:
Tériade, 1947). Pochoir, 16 5⁄8 × 25 5⁄8 in. (42.2 × 65.1 cm). Gift of Lila Acheson Wallace, 1983
(1983.1009 [1–22])

With Jazz, Matisse employed an unorthodox and distinct visual vocabulary to radically
rethink what an illustrated book could be. The Knife Thrower is one of twenty plates
he made, many illustrating his memories of the circus, using the stencil technique of
pochoir. The irregularly shaped image and bold colors reflect what Matisse termed
“drawing with scissors,” that is, his process of cutting directly into sheets of colored
paper to create various shapes and outlines that he then arranged in compositions or
recycled in future works. These paper cutouts were then made into stencil prints.

Roy DeCarava (American, 1919–2009). Billie Holiday, 1952. Gelatin silver print,
127⁄8 × 9 5⁄8 in. (32.7 × 24.4 cm). Anonymous Gift, in memory of Mortimer D. Sackler, 2010
(2010.325)

Trained as a painter and printmaker, DeCarava took up photography in the late 1940s
while working as an illustrator at an advertising agency. He displayed a clear affinity
for the medium and won a fellowship from the John Simon ­Guggenheim ­Memorial
Foundation in 1952. As he set out that year to photograph the people of Harlem, he
found the perfect subject in jazz singer Billie Holiday. Although already plagued by the
drug and alcohol problems that would lead to her death seven years later, she appears
here as hopeful, soulful, and full of life.

31
 Anna Atkins (British, 1799–1871). Spiraea aruncus (Tyrol), 1851–54. Cyanotype, 137⁄8 × 93⁄4 in.
(35.1 × 24.6 cm). Purchase, Alfred Stieglitz Society Gifts, 2004 (2004.172)

Spiraea aruncus (Tyrol) is a superb example of Atkins’s cameraless photograms of algae and plant
specimens, which the artist either gathered herself or received from other amateur scientists.
A continuation of the long-standing tradition of botanical illustration in all media, Atkins’s early
efforts resulted in the first photographically printed and illustrated book, Photographs of British
Algae (1843). To make her prints, Atkins placed plant samples directly on light-sensitized paper.
The resulting cyanotypes, or blueprints, appear as negative images against a sea of Prussian blue.

32
Attributed to Mary Delany (British, 1700–1788). Botanical Study, ca. 1772–82. Paper collage; sheet
(irregular), 101⁄8 × 91⁄8 in. (25.5 × 23.2 cm). Harris Brisbane Dick Fund, 1925 (25.19.45)

Delany mastered the art of “paper mosaick” at age seventy-two, when fading eyesight hindered
her embroidery. She nonetheless became one of the most accomplished practitioners of this
unusual genre. Working to scale directly from plant specimens, Delany cut and assembled doz-
ens of minute pieces of colored tissue to create precise botanical images, such as this exquisite
study, likely made for Lord and Lady Bute during a visit Delany made to their estate at Luton Hoo.

33
 Alfred Stieglitz (American, 1864–1946). Gable and Apples, 1922. Gelatin silver print,
3 5⁄8 × 41⁄2 in. (9 × 11.4 cm). Ford Motor Company Collection, Gift of Ford Motor Company
and John C. Waddell, 1987 (1987.1100.103)

At age seventy-five, when he was no longer making new photographs, Stieglitz

made a Christmas card with this contact print of an image from the early days of
his life with Georgia O’Keeffe. The folded mount is inscribed For Georgia. Alfred.
Xmas 1939: a sweet reminder of a passionate past.

34
Édouard Manet (French, 1832–1883). A Letter to Eugène Maus, Decorated with Two
Plums, August 2, 1880. Watercolor and pen and ink, 8 × 93⁄4 in. (20.1 × 24.8 cm). Purchase,
Guy Wildenstein Gift, 2003 (2003.1)

The letters Manet embellished with watercolors of fruit from his garden at Bellevue
and sent to his friends are enchantingly informal. This letter to fellow painter
Eugène Maus is fresh in color and features one of his favorite subjects, the yellow-­
green plums called mirabelles. In the letter, Manet shares his concern about his
submission to the 1880 Salon in Ghent.

35
 Diane Arbus (American, 1923–1971). Two caged monkeys, Central Park Zoo, N.Y.C.,
1958. Gelatin silver print, 57⁄8 × 81⁄2 in. (14.9 × 21.5 cm). Promised Gift of Doon Arbus and
Amy Arbus, 2007

Before her photographs first appeared in Esquire magazine, in 1960, Arbus pho-
tographed a wide variety of subjects in and around New York, often in the hope of
finding editorial work. Whether she had a specific story or assignment in mind when
she took photographs of the monkeys in the Central Park Zoo is unknown, but this
particular image is entirely consistent with her more famous work made during the
same period. Indeed, the baby monkey, behind bars and staring directly at the camera,
is a poignant counterpart to the pictures Esquire published in 1960: photographs of
guileless denizens in locales both “posh and sordid” captured on a nighttime journey
through the city.

36
Georges Seurat (French, 1859–1891). Monkey, 1884. Conté crayon, 93⁄8 × 121⁄4 in.
(23.9 × 31.1 cm). Bequest of Miss Adelaide Milton de Groot (1876–1967), 1967 (67.187.35)

In this study for his famous painting A Sunday on La Grande Jatte (1886, Art Institute
of Chicago), Seurat imparted a timeless, idealized appearance to a monkey by show-
ing the animal in strict profile, with minimal detail and only a vague hint of a setting.
He defined the essential aspects of the monkey through broad strokes of Conté
crayon while reserving the paper support to suggest light emanating from behind.

37
 Hans Hoffmann (German, ca. 1545/50–1591/92). A Hedgehog
(Erinaceus roumanicus), before 1584. Watercolor and gouache on
vellum, 81⁄8 × 121⁄8 in. (20.7 × 30.7 cm). Purchase, Annette de la Renta
Gift, 2005 (2005.347)

This breathtakingly lifelike depiction of a hedgehog must have

been based on sketches made from life. Although Hoffmann was
a painter and a draftsman of portraits and religious subjects, he
is remembered mainly for his studies of plants and animals. His
initial inspiration was not nature itself, however, but the highly
detailed studies of it made by his famous predecessor Albrecht
Dürer, whose works were still admired and highly coveted some
forty years after his death. While Dürer tended to stress the
objectivity of his observations, Hoffmann animated his depic-
tions of animals, suggesting a touching alertness absent from the
greater artist’s nature studies.

Karl Blossfeldt (German, 1865–1932). Blumenbachia hieronymi,

1915–25. Gelatin silver print, 113⁄4 × 93⁄8 in. (29.8 × 23.8 cm).
Gilman Collection, Purchase, Denise and Andrew Saul Gift, 2005
(2005.100.299)

Blossfeldt began his exploration of forms in nature in 1890, but

his images were little known before their publication in Urformen
der Kunst (Art Forms in Nature) in 1928, a book that secured
Blossfeldt’s international fame. The renegade Surrealist writer
Georges Bataille, fascinated by the hallucinatory clarity and
sinister sexuality of Blossfeldt’s plant forms, chose several of the
photographs to illustrate his essay on the enigmatic “language of
flowers” in the first issue of his review Documents in June 1929.

38
Hercules Segers (Dutch, ca. 1590–ca. 1638). Plateau in Rocky
Mountains, ca. 1625–30. Etching, drypoint, and metal punch printed
in blue-green on paper with a yellow-green ground, colored with
brush; second state of two, 41⁄8 × 51⁄2 in. (10.5 × 13.8 cm). Harris
Brisbane Dick Fund, 1923 (23.57.3)

The most idiosyncratic and experimental printmaker of the

seventeenth century, Segers pushed traditional techniques to
their most expressive ends in his otherworldly landscapes. By
etching in colored inks on paper that was already colored and
then painting the printed impression by hand, he created a
unique work of art using a medium more typically employed to
create multiples of the same image.

Louis Ducos du Hauron (French, 1837–1920). Fox, ca. 1870

Three-color assembly print, 9 5⁄8 × 87⁄8 in. (24.4 × 22.4 cm).
Gilman Collection, Gift of The Howard Gilman Foundation, 2005
(2005.100.214)

Ducos du Hauron, an amateur physicist and artist, began

experimenting with color photography in the early 1860s. By
1868 he had patented a three-color process that he improved
upon and published the following year in the treatise Les
Couleurs en photographie: solution du problème. His method
involved exposing negatives through green, orange-red, and
blue-violet filters and then making positives of them on three
sheets of gelatin incorporating carbon pigments of primary
colors. When superimposed, the three layers made a single color
photograph: a technique that is essentially the basis of modern
color processes.

39
 Thomas Struth (German, born 1954). Blick in Thur-Tal—no. 19, 1993. Chromogenic
print, 447⁄8 × 523⁄4 in. (114 × 134 cm). Purchase, Harriett Ames Charitable Trust Gift, 2002
(2002.40)

Commissioned to decorate the walls of a hospital in Winterthur, Switzerland, Struth

photographed the surrounding rural landscape and flowers in the hospital’s lush
gardens. In each of the patients’ rooms he placed a small flower study and a large
landscape at the head and foot of each bed, respectively. Through conceiving and
creating photographs specifically for a site of recovery and rehabilitation, Struth made
explicit the conceptual framework underlying all his work: the therapeutic belief that
images can facilitate the viewer’s active reconfiguration of the relationship between
one’s own irreducible being and the givens of circumstance.

40
Joseph Mallord William Turner (British, 1775–1851). The Lake of Zug, 1843. Watercolor
over graphite, 113⁄4 × 183⁄8 in. (29.8 × 46.6 cm). Marquand Fund, 1959 (59.120)

In one of his masterful late watercolors, Turner manipulated an evocative range of

blues, yellows, and pinks to depict a summer dawn in the German-speaking region of
Switzerland. As the sun rises between distant mountains over the town of Arth, its
rays illumine high clouds and rising mist, with reflections forming a path across the
Lake of Zug. On the near shore, villagers gather at the water’s edge and nymphlike
figures bathe and play.

41
 Hiroshi Sugimoto (Japanese, born 1948). Avalon Theatre, Catalina Island, 1993. Gelatin
silver print, 16 5⁄8 × 213⁄8 in. (42.2 × 54.1 cm). Purchase, The Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation
Gift, through Joyce and Robert Menschel, 1996 (1996.105.1)

In 1978 Sugimoto began a series of photographs called Motion Pictures, in which he

recorded the empty interiors of a number of Depression-­era movie palaces. The elab-
orate decor of each theater—mostly fantasy interpretations of Italian villas, Spanish
courts, or ­Persian gardens—frames a blank but mysteriously glowing movie screen.
This hallucinatory radiance derives from the cumulative projection of an entire feature
film compressed, through long exposure, into Sugimoto’s negative. The resulting light
delicately reveals what is usually hidden: the interior of the theater’s shell, gleaming
seductively with the high expectancy and grand illusions of popular culture.

42
Karl Friedrich Thiele (German, 1780–1836) after Karl Friedrich Schinkel (German,
1781–1841). Design for “The Magic Flute”: The Hall of Stars in the Palace of the Queen of
the Night, Act 1, Scene 6, 1847–49. Aquatint printed in color and hand-colored; sheet
137⁄8 × 201⁄4 in. (35.1 × 51.2 cm). The Elisha Whittelsey Collection, The Elisha Whittelsey
Fund, 1954 (54.602.1 [14])

Schinkel, the most prominent German architect of the nineteenth century, spent
much of his early career in Germany creating innovative sets for Berlin’s major theatri-
cal stages. He focused on creating well-executed backdrops rather than the staggered
fixed flats with one-point perspective that had been popular during the Baroque and
Rococo eras. In this magnificent piece, one of twelve set designs originally created
for an 1816 production of Mozart’s opera The Magic Flute, the Queen of the Night
appears standing on a crescent moon under a heavenly vault dotted with stars.

43
 Lewis Carroll (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson) (British, 1832–1898).
St. George and the Dragon, June 26, 1875. Albumen silver print from glass
negative, 45⁄8 × 63⁄8 in. (11.7 × 16 cm). Gilman Collection, Purchase, Ann
Tenenbaum and Thomas H. Lee Gift, 2005 (2005.100.21)

In 1872 Carroll, the famous author of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland,

had a studio built above his rooms at Christ Church, Oxford. With
trunks full of toys and costumes from the Drury Lane Theatre,
the “glass house” was intended as a paradise for the children of
visiting friends and colleagues. In this tableau vivant, Carroll cast Xie
(Alexandra) Kitchin, his muse in the 1870s, as the princess to her
brother’s Saint George; another knight/brother has fallen prey to
the leopard-skin dragon. Not part of a seamless illusion, the flimsy
crowns and rocking horse instead hint at the children’s power of
make believe.

William Henry Bradley (American, 1868–1962). Frontispiece Design

for “Peter Poodle, Toymaker to the King,” 1906. Graphite, black ink,
watercolor and gouache; sheet, 141⁄4 × 111⁄4 in. (36.2 × 28.6 cm). The Will
Bradley Collection, Gift of Fern Bradley Dufner, 1952 (52.625.126)

One of America’s most inventive turn-of-the-century poster

designers and graphic artists, Bradley played with stylized heraldic
symmetry for this illustration for a children’s book that he also
wrote. Seated on cat-shaped thrones, the characters Tommy and
Helen feast on magically delicious sweets after being crowned king
and queen of Toyville. Glinting eyes at their knees indicate that their
feline supporters hope for a share.

44
Compiled by Gideon Saint (British, 1729–1799). Scrapbook with
Furniture Designs, ca. 1763. Pen and ink, engraving and etching,
125⁄8 × 6 3⁄4 in. (32 × 17 cm). Harris Brisbane Dick Fund, 1934 (34.90.1)

This vellum-bound scrapbook with designs for furniture and

associated decorations was compiled by the eighteenth-century
British carver and gilder Gideon Saint. Chock-full of drawings and
prints, many cut from British and French series of ornament prints,
the volume was organized according to object type (such as brackets,
tables, or chimneys) so that Saint’s clients could easily choose which
pieces they wanted to have made. This album is the sort of everyday
studio working material that was rarely preserved.

Eugène Atget (French, 1857–1927). Hôtel de Lauzun, Quai

d’Anjou, 1905. Albumen silver print from glass negative, 81⁄2 × 7 in.
(21.6 × 17.8 cm). Gift of Virginia M. Zabriskie, 1992 (1992.5116)

About 1904 Atget began photographing the interiors of

­seventeenth- and eighteenth-­century hôtels particuliers, or town
houses, including the Hôtel de Lauzun, on the Île Saint-Louis in
Paris. During the 1840s the poets Charles Baudelaire and Théophile
Gautier had rented upstairs apartments in the house, which also
served as the site of many drug-induced experiences of the infamous
club des hashischins. Atget was less interested in such Romantic
exploits than in documenting the decor of the house, including its
Neo­classical paneling. Much of this boiserie was dismantled and
sold off during a twentieth-century renovation and was ultimately
acquired by The Met in 1976.

45
 Berenice Abbott (American, 1898–1991). Sumner Healey Antique Shop, 942 Third Avenue
near 57th Street, Manhattan, 1936. Gelatin silver print, 81⁄8 × 10 in. (20.6 × 25.2 cm). Gift of
Phyllis D. Massar, 1971 (1971.550.10)

In 1935 Abbott embarked on a series of photographs documenting New York City.

Funded by the Federal Art Project, during the next four years she made hundreds
of images of the city’s monuments and architecture, including this one of Sumner
Healey’s shop. Attracted to the “extraordinary montage of antiques”—anchored by a
ten-foot-tall figurehead of Mars from an eighteenth-­century battleship—Abbott also
captured the owner’s cat, seemingly trapped on either side by the decorative dogs
flanking the store’s entrance. Healey died soon after Abbott made this photograph,
and the shop closed two years later.

46
Gabriel de Saint-Aubin (French, 1724–1780). The Shop of M. Périer, Ironwork Merchant,
1767. Etching and drypoint, reworked with pen and brown ink; sheet, 61⁄8 × 91⁄4 in.
(15.5 × 23.5 cm). The Elisha Whittelsey Collection, The Elisha Whittelsey Fund, 1979
(1979.650)

This design for a business card (or possibly an announcement) shows an ironmonger’s
shop as if the facade had been removed, thus presenting the interior as a theatrical
tableau. In a setting cluttered with wares, a male customer discusses the merits of a
lock with a female employee. This impression is an early, unfinished state on which
the artist made additions in pen and ink to indicate where he intended to further work
the plate.

47
 Marcel Duchamp (American, born France,
1887–1968). Cigarette, 1936. Gelatin silver print,
117⁄8 × 81⁄8 in. (30 × 20.7 cm). Ford Motor Company
Collection, Gift of Ford Motor Company and John C.
Waddell, 1987 (1987.1100.99)
This hand-colored photograph of a cigarette
without its wrapping papers is one of several prints
made for the covers of the limited edition of Sur-
realist poet Georges Hugnet’s book The Seventh
Face of the Die (1936). Duchamp’s cigarette, the
quintessential sexual surrogate, was an “assisted
readymade,” an example of the artist’s ability to
render an everyday object mysterious and unset-
tling. The idea for the picture stems from a passage
in the tenth part of Hugnet’s book, in which the
poet writes of a woman’s “young magnolia breast /
pretty and gloved like a cigarette / caressing as a
cherry / anxious as the last train. . . .”
48
American Tobacco Company (established
Durham, North Carolina, 1890). Honus Wagner,
Pittsburgh, National League, from the White Border
Series (T206), 1909–11. Commercial lithograph,
25⁄8 × 11⁄2 in. (6.7 × 3.7 cm). The Jefferson R.
Burdick Collection, Gift of Jefferson R. Burdick
(63.350.246.206.378)
Honus Wagner, a shortstop for the Pittsburgh
Pirates from 1900 to 1917, is widely recognized as
one of the best baseball players of all time. The
baseball card with his image on it is the rarest
of all baseball cards, however, because Wagner
requested that the card be pulled from production
shortly after it was released. Legend has it that
he objected to the use of his image to advertise
tobacco products to children.
A CENTENNIAL ALBUM
Drawings, Prints, and Photographs
The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin Winter 2017