Cattle at a watering hole in a valley

John Henry Mole

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Born in Northumberland, Mole worked as a clerk before becoming a professional miniaturist and exhibiting at Newcastle-upon-Tyne and London. Around 1846, he shifted his focus to landscape and became a full member of the New Watercolour Society in 1848 (later the Institute of Painters in Water Colours), eventually serving as vice-president and exhibiting 679 works at their annual displays. "Cattle at a Watering Hole" is unusual in the artist's oeuvre for its broad handling, and the lack of figures--most of his landscapes include children. The location has not been identified, but the eroded limestone cliffs are reminiscent of the Yorkshire dales near Malham.

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