Elijah and the Widow's Son, from "Dalziels' Bible Gallery"

Ford Madox Brown

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Brown trained in the Netherlands then worked in France and England before befriending the Pre-Raphaelites in 1848. He gave painting lessons to Dante Gabriel Rossetti and absorbed aspects of William Holman Hunt’s intense realism. Hunt contributee three designs to Dalziels’ Bible Gallery, including this striking image of Elijah restoring a boy to life from 1 Kings 17:17–24. The prophet’s spiritual and physical vigor is evident as he carries a youth, still wrapped in a shroud, down a flight of stairs to his grateful mother. Authentic Middle Eastern architecture and accouterments combined with dramatic poses bring the scene vibrantly to life.

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