Studies of male heads and a standing male figure

Studies of male heads and a standing male figure

Eugène Delacroix

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Delacroix executed the variety of figures and heads that occupy the center of this sheet with the utmost economy of means. With a few strokes of his brush dipped in gray wash, he conveys a host of characters and expressions. The layered splotches of color that border the right and left sides show how the artist blotted and tested his watercolors.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Studies of male heads and a standing male figureStudies of male heads and a standing male figureStudies of male heads and a standing male figureStudies of male heads and a standing male figureStudies of male heads and a standing male figure

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.