New Year's Day in Old New York, from "The Graphic" Christmas Number

New Year's Day in Old New York, from "The Graphic" Christmas Number

George Henry Boughton

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Boughton made his name with American colonial subjects and exhibited examples in London and New York from the 1860s through the 1890s. The present image from 1882, imagines New York shortly after the British took over from the Dutch in 1675 (in 1876 Boughton had painted "New Year’s Day in New Amsterdam," set around 1640). "The Graphic" chose this subject for a color-printed wood engraving, one of those they published annually as a premium for readers at Christmas, and the image centers on a young man who lifts his plumed hat to kiss a young woman wearing a ruff, fur-edged cape and muff. On April 3, 1870 "Harper's Weekly" reissued the print in New York, an indication of how British prints were often quickly recirculated by American publishers.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

New Year's Day in Old New York, from "The Graphic" Christmas NumberNew Year's Day in Old New York, from "The Graphic" Christmas NumberNew Year's Day in Old New York, from "The Graphic" Christmas NumberNew Year's Day in Old New York, from "The Graphic" Christmas NumberNew Year's Day in Old New York, from "The Graphic" Christmas Number

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.