Bridge and Cows, part I, plate 2 from "Liber Studiorum"

Bridge and Cows, part I, plate 2 from "Liber Studiorum"

Joseph Mallord William Turner

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Turner distilled his ideas about To establish the compositions, he made brown watercolor drawings, then etched outlines onto copper plates. Professional engravers usually developed the tone under Turner's direction, and Charles Turner here added mezzotint to describe cows standing in a shallow water near a rustic wooden bridge, with trees shading the scene and two pairs of figures on the bank. The print demonstrates Turner's mastery of eighteenth-century picturesque and interest in Gainsborough's soft-ground etchings, with the "P" in the upper margin indicating the category of Pastoral landscape.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Bridge and Cows, part I, plate 2 from "Liber Studiorum"Bridge and Cows, part I, plate 2 from "Liber Studiorum"Bridge and Cows, part I, plate 2 from "Liber Studiorum"Bridge and Cows, part I, plate 2 from "Liber Studiorum"Bridge and Cows, part I, plate 2 from "Liber Studiorum"

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.