The Despair of Hecuba

Pierre Peyron

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Peyron prevailed over Jacques Louis David in the 1773 Prix de Rome competition and would spend seven years studying at the Académie de France. In what was framed as a rivalry, both painters sought to establish their reputations by exhibiting subjects of ancient history at the Salons of the 1780s, although public opinion, and posterity, ultimately favored the work of David. This delicately tinted drawing shares the elegiac tone of many of Peyron’s compositions, manifest in the swooning poses of the figures and the expressively rendered drapery.

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