Pancratium (American narcissus)

Georg Dionysius Ehret

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Ehret’s drawings combine scientific understanding with floral beauty. A native of Heidelberg, he developed from an apprentice gardener into an artist associated with botanists across Europe, notably Carl Linnaeus, whose system of binomial nomenclature Ehret helped to disseminate. After settling in London in 1736, the artist remained in touch with another mentor, the Nuremberg botanist Christopher Joseph Trew, sending drawings used to illustrate the latter’s Plantae Selectae quarum imagines ad exemplaria naturalia Londini in hortus curiosorum (1750–73)—ten volumes that describe specimens brought to London from Asia and America. This rendering of a South American narcissus resembles plants discussed in volume three, and the carefully drawn stamens and pistils reflect Trew’s interest in the reproductive systems of flowers.

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.

Metropolitan Museum of Art