Departure for the Hunt
Medium
Pen and black ink
Dimensions
6 5/16 x 4 3/8 in. (16 x 11.1 cm)
Classification
Drawings
Department
Drawings and Prints
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
The J.B. Neumann Collection, Gift of Dr. Franz H. Hirschland, 1951
Accession Number
51.504.27
Tags
Art Historical Context
Rodolphe Bresdin’s *Departure for the Hunt* captures a lively procession of men and dogs setting out with spears, rendered in delicate yet precise pen-and-black-ink lines. Though the exact date remains unknown, the small drawing—measuring just over six by four inches—reveals Bresdin’s celebrated mastery of intricate detail. Every figure and animal is suggested through a web of fine strokes that convey both movement and texture, inviting viewers to linger over the scene’s energy and narrative suggestion. Bresdin, a 19th-century French draftsman and printmaker, worked largely outside official a...
About the Artist
Rodolphe Bresdin · 1822–1885
Rodolphe Bresdin (1822–1885) was a visionary French draughtsman, engraver, and lithographer whose fantastical imagery captured the empathy of rural poverty and the wild exuberance of the imagination. Born on August 12, 1822, in Montrelais near Le Fresne-sur-Loire in Brittany, he grew up in the Breton countryside amid its bardic folklore traditions before a family dispute left him homeless in Paris...