Design for Two Vases
ca. 1770–85
Medium
Pen and brown ink, black chalk, and watercolor
Dimensions
14 13/16 x 9 1/16 in. (37.7 x 22.95 cm)
Classification
Drawings|Ornament & Architecture
Department
Drawings and Prints
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
Gift of Raphael Esmerian, 1961
Accession Number
61.680.1.15
Tags
Art Historical Context
This delicate *Design for Two Vases*, created by an anonymous French artist around 1770–85, exemplifies the refined ornamental drawings that flourished in late 18th-century France. Produced during the transition from the exuberant Rococo style to emerging Neoclassicism, such designs served as blueprints for luxury decorative arts—likely intended for porcelain, silver, or gilt-bronze vases destined for aristocratic salons. Housed in the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Drawings and Prints department, this sheet (a gift from Raphael Esmerian in 1961) captures the era's obsession with elegant, symmet...
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...