Pilgrim at the Gate (Einsiedler an der Pforte)
Karl Blechen
An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art
A pilgrim looks up from his book to gaze into the distance as brilliant sunshine streams into the shadowed structure where he rests. This tranquil scene is the most delicate and subtle of Karl Blechen's prints, an early work by the painter and draftsman whose prolific career lasted only a brief fifteen years. Blechen created some fifty etchings and lithographs during his lifetime, and these are among his rarest works. He produced this lithograph for a portfolio published in 1827 by the artists' group the Berlinischer Künstlerverein. That year, he left a job as a designer of stage sets at the Königstadt Theater in Berlin to embark on a career as an independent artist. Given his experience, the prominence he gave here to the evocative setting seems hardly surprising. Blechen's imagery is indebted to the Romantic painter Caspar David Friedrich, whom he probably met when he visited Dresden in 1823. Yet except for the crumbling building and the figure looking away from the viewer, this sunny scene is decidedly different in tone from Friedrich's moody, moonlit depictions. The influence of such dark romantic imagery recurs in others of Blechen's works, but here the atmosphere is remarkably bright and uplifting.
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.