Half-length portrait of a bearded man in historical dress

Half-length portrait of a bearded man in historical dress

Richard Parkes Bonington

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Bonington met Delacroix in 1825 who encouraged him to create historical genre subjects. Old master paintings were an important source of inspiration and Bonginton here uses brown wash to copy Rembrandt's "Portrait of an Old Man with a Stick and Beret" (Gemaldegalerie Alte Meister, Dresden, now attributed to a follower). Since he reverses the original, Bonington must have worked from a print, using brown wash in masterly fashion to capture a range of textures. In 1827 he introduced elements into his own watercolor, "Old Man and Child" (Wallace Collection, London).

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Half-length portrait of a bearded man in historical dressHalf-length portrait of a bearded man in historical dressHalf-length portrait of a bearded man in historical dressHalf-length portrait of a bearded man in historical dressHalf-length portrait of a bearded man in historical dress

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.