The Metropolitan Museum of Art in new York has a wonderful practice of periodically assembling small, non-blockbuster exhibitions of works on paper from their enormously deep collections.
These often go unnoticed in the press, but can surprise and delight visitors to the museum who come across them on their way to something else in the museum. Personally, I tend to seek them out, as I particularly love master drawings and the related practices of etching, drypoint and aquatint.
There is a gallery on the Met’s website that features a number of pieces from the show, and — in another wonderful practice — the Met provides easily accessible high-resolution images of works like these from their permanent collection.
(Click on “Fullscreen” under the images and then choose to zoom or use the download arrow at lower right of the zoomable image.)
I’ve provided a detail crop of each of the images above, but the high-res versions are available in even greater detail.
“Artists and Amateurs: Etching in Eighteenth-Century France” runs until January 5, 2014.
There is also a catalog accompanying the exhibition.
(Images above, each with detail crop: Joseph Marie Vien, Louis Jean Desprez, Jean Honoré Fragonard, Jean Étienne Liotard)
