Seated girl

Seated girl

George Jones

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The draftsman of this sketch was one of Britain's most successful battle painters in the decade following Napoleon's 1815 defeat. Jones had entered the Royal Academy Schools at fifteen, then exhibited literary and religious subjects, views and portraits before joining the army in 1808. He fought as a captain in the Montgomery militia during the Peninsular War, then made good use of that experience to devise military images for an interested public--he also became an expert on the Battle of Waterloo (where he did not fight)and won a prize in 1820 for a painting commemorating Wellington's most famous victory, now at the Royal Military Hospital, Chelsea.


Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

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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.