Sr. George Bridges Rodney, Rear Admiral of the Blue

Anonymous, British, late 18th century

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Naval portraiture was a mainstay of Reynolds's career in the seventeen-fifties and sixties. Rodney was born into an aristocratic and military family and became one of the most distinguished British naval commanders of the eighteenth century. Here he is depicted in the uniform of a Rear-Admiral with his right arm resting on the fluke of an anchor and the sea glimpsed behind. The print is based on a splendid portrait by Reynolds whose primary version is at Petworth House, Sussex. James Watson (ca. 1740–1790) was the first to engrave the latter as a large mezzotint in 1762, wishing to capitalise on Rodney's growing fame–that year his fleet successfully attacked Martinique in the West Indies and captured the islands of Saint Lucia, Grenada and Saint Vincent. This smaller plate was published in 1780 by an unidentified engraver.

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.