Man with sword and feathered hat, viewed from the back
mid–19th century
Medium
Lithograph
Dimensions
Sheet: 1 15/16 × 1 7/16 in. (5 × 3.7 cm) Mount: 12 5/16 x 18 1/16 in. (31.3 x 45.9 cm)
Classification
Prints
Department
Drawings and Prints
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
Gift of Dr. Stephen K. and Janie Woo Scher, 2012
Accession Number
2012.401.4b
Tags
Art Historical Context
In the mid-19th century, artist Victor Adam captured the swagger of a mysterious figure in his lithograph *Man with Sword and Feathered Hat, Viewed from the Back*. intimate print, measuring just 115/16 × 1 7/16 inches on its sheet, depicts a man seen from behind, his elaborate feathered hat and sheathed sword evoking the romanticized world of military dandies or adventurers. Adam, a prolific lithographer known for lively genre scenes, rendered the figure with fluid lines that highlight the hat's dramatic plumes and the sword's gleaming hilt, turning a simple rear view into a study of posture a...
About the Artist
Victor Adam · 1801–1866
Victor Adam was born in Paris in 1801 and built a prolific and commercially successful career as one of the leading lithographers and illustrators of nineteenth-century France. He received a conventional academic training in painting, but it was the new medium of lithography — still in its first decades of widespread use when Adam came of age — that provided the ideal vehicle for his gifts: a faci...