Too Hot, from "Illustrated London News"

Too Hot, from "Illustrated London News"

James Collinson

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Collinson who designed this print was one of the original members of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, resigning in 1850 to revert to Roman Catholicism and enter Stonyhurst College to train for the priesthood. By the 1860s, when he designed this image, the artist had returned to London, married, and was painting more conventional genre subjects. The work includes many sensitive observations about the character of country life, centered on a grandfather helping a child to drink hot tea. Published by the "Illustrated London News" as a special supplement for subscribers at Christmas, the work represents fine color printing of the period, produced using several woodblocks by Leighton Brothers.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Too Hot, from "Illustrated London News"Too Hot, from "Illustrated London News"Too Hot, from "Illustrated London News"Too Hot, from "Illustrated London News"Too Hot, 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.