Leaf of Sketches
1833–38
Medium
Etching
Dimensions
Plate: 9 13/16 × 7 3/8 in. (25 × 18.8 cm) Sheet: 12 5/16 × 8 15/16 in. (31.3 × 22.7 cm)
Classification
Prints
Department
Drawings and Prints
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
The Elisha Whittelsey Collection, The Elisha Whittelsey Fund, 1962
Accession Number
62.591.4
Art Historical Context
In the heart of the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Drawings and Prints collection sits *Leaf of Sketches* (1833–38), an etching by French artist Alexandre-Gabriel Decamps. Created during a pivotal era of Romanticism in 19th-century France, this intimate sheet—measuring about 10 by 7 inches on the plate—captures Decamps' masterful draftsmanship through a series of spontaneous studies. Decamps, a trailblazer in blending Orientalist themes with dramatic realism, drew inspiration from his transformative travels to North Africa and the Middle East in the late 1820s, infusing his works with exotic lig...
About the Artist
Alexandre-Gabriel Decamps · 1803–1860
Comment on works: genre