The Young Girl Resting

François Boucher

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Although he worked primarily as a painter and draftsman, Boucher found early employment as a printmaker, making etchings after the paintings and drawings of Antoine Watteau. He also etched around thirty compositions of his own designs. La Petite Reposée is one of his more ambitious efforts in this medium. The rather static composition of a young woman and a boy placed before a rustic wall is enlivened by Boucher's very free use of the etching needle.

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