Design for a Vignette: Harbor Scene
Medium
Pen and black ink with brush and gray wash
Dimensions
1 1/4 x 3 3/8 in. (3.1 x 8.6 cm)
Classification
Drawings
Department
Drawings and Prints
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
Gift of Lincoln Kirstein, 1965
Accession Number
65.717.1
Tags
Art Historical Context
Nestled among the treasures of the Metropolitan Museum of's Drawings and Prints department, *Design for a Vignette Harbor Scene* by Charles Percier captures the elegance of early 19th-century French design in a remarkably compact form—measuring just 1 1/4 x 3 3/8 inches. Percier, a leading neoclassical architect and decorator famed for his collaborations with Pierre Fontaine on Napoleonic interiors, here turns his precise hand to a vignette: a delicate, self-contained illustration often used to adorn book pages or decorative prints. Rendered in pen and black ink with subtle brush and gray wash...
About the Artist
Charles Percier · 1764–1838
Charles Percier (1764–1838) rose from humble origins in Paris, where his mother laundered for Marie-Antoinette and his father served as a porter at the Tuileries Palace, to become one of France's most influential neoclassical architects and designers. From age twelve, he attended a free drawing school for indigent students, honing his skills in the studio of painter Louis-Jean-François Lagrenée be...