Design for Trade Card [The Sun Life Assurance Society]

Walter Crane

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Crane was a prolific designer of a range of printed materials including playbills, magazine covers, private view invitations and posters. He also received many commissions from commercial organizations for documents including, as here, a certificate for an insurance company, Sun Life Assurance Society, which was founded in 1810. The dynamic design features a charioteer charging forward led by four galloping horses, silhouetted against a blazing sunburst, in reference to the company's name. Blank areas were left throughout the design to be filled later; the intended lettering is faintly indicated by the artist in graphite.

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