Le Bon Samaritain (The Good Samaritan)
after 1861
Medium
Lithograph
Dimensions
Sheet: 24 3/8 × 19 1/2 in. (61.9 × 49.6 cm) Image: 22 3/8 × 17 5/8 in. (56.8 × 44.8 cm)
Classification
Prints
Department
Drawings and Prints
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
The J. B. Neumann Collection, Gift of Dr. Franz H. Hirschland, 1952
Accession Number
52.508.40
Art Historical Context
**Le Bon SamaritainThe Good Samaritan)**, a captivating lithograph by French artist Rodolphe Bres, printed by the renowned Parisian firm Lemercier &. after 1861, draws from the biblical parable in Luke 10:25–37. This moving story of compassion—a Samaritan aiding a robbed traveler when others pass by—finds vivid expression in Bresdin's composition, measuring nearly two feet across on its sheet. Housed in The Metropolitan Museum of Art's Drawings and Prints department, it entered the collection in 1952 through the J. B. Neumann Collection, gifted by Dr. Franz H. Hirschland. Bresdin, a visionary...
About the Artist
Rodolphe Bresdin|Lemercier & Cie. · 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...