Christmas Time, from "Illustrated London News"

Harvey Orrin Smith

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

A boy wrapped against the cold carries a basket of holly, a sprig tucked into his hat, and stands in a wintry coastal landscape. Harvey Orrin Smith's wood engraving for the "Illustrated London News" is based on a painting by William Hemsley, a London genre painter and son of an architect who initially followed his father’s profession, then switched gears and taught himself to paint. Regarded by his contemporaries as a "painter of cottage life," Hemsley's small-scale genre subjects often focus on children, a mode established by Frederick Daniel Hardy. These were shown at the Royal Academy, British Institution and Society of British Artists—Hemsley belonged to the latter and served as vice president.

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