The Grace, from "Illustrated London News"

The Grace, from "Illustrated London News"

Frederick Goodall

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

As a family gathers to eat in a humble room, a grandfather blesses the food next to his wife, as a younger woman holds a baby in her lap, and two children sit quietly in the foregound. Thomas's wood engraving reproduces a painting by Frederick Goodall, the second son of the skilled line engraver Edward Goodall. As a child, Frederick and his siblings had been encouraged to pursue art by John Ruskin, Clarkson Stanfield, David Roberts, and J.M.W. Turner. At sixteen, Goodall showed four commissioned watercolors at the Royal Academy, then won a silver medal at the Society of Arts for an oil painting. This early success allowed visits to Brittany and Ireland, and led him to depict rustic village subjects influenced by David Wilkie. In 1852, Goodall was elected an Associate of the Royal Academy. An extended trip to Egypt in 1858 set his subsequent career on a different course.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Grace, from "Illustrated London News"The Grace, from "Illustrated London News"The Grace, from "Illustrated London News"The Grace, from "Illustrated London News"The Grace, from "Illustrated London News"

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.