Design for an Ornamental Doorway Leading to a Garden
18th century
Medium
Pen and gray ink, brush and gray and brown wash
Dimensions
7 5/8 x 17 1/4 in. (19.4 x 43.8 cm)
Classification
Drawings
Department
Drawings and Prints
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
The Elisha Whittelsey Collection, The Elisha Whittelsey Fund, 1954
Accession Number
54.513.1
Tags
Art Historical Context
This exquisite 18th drawing, titled *Design an Ornamental Door Leading to a Garden*, the elegance of French architectural fantasy by an anonymous artist. Rendered in pen and gray ink with brush and gray and brown wash a modest sheet measuring 7 5/8 x 17 1/4 inches, it depicts a grand, arched doorway framed by scrolling motifs and foliage, inviting passage to a lush garden beyond. Housed in the Metropolitan Museum Art's Drawings and Prints, it entered the collection The Elisha Whittelsey Fund in 1954. In the opulent world of 18th-century France, such preparatory designs were vital for architec...
About the Artist
Anonymous, French, 18th century · 1700–1800
The artist known as Anonymous, French, 18th century, represents a collective of unidentified talents active roughly between 1700 and 1800, a period of profound artistic evolution in France from the opulent Rococo to the austere dawn of Neoclassicism and Revolutionary fervor. Little is documented about their personal training or mentors, as their anonymity obscures individual biographies, though th...