Project for a Monumental Fountain
1767
Medium
Pen and brown and black ink, brush and brown and gray wash
Dimensions
15 11/16 x 24 in. (39.8 x 61 cm)
Classification
Drawings
Department
Drawings and Prints
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
Harry G. Sperling Fund, 1979
Accession Number
1979.388
Tags
Art Historical Context
Augustin Pajou’s *Project for a Monumental Fountain* (1767) captures the elegant ambition of eighteenth-century French design. Created in pen and brown and black ink with brush and brown and gray wash, the large drawing served as a detailed proposal for a sculptural fountain, a form of public art that adorned royal gardens and city squares during the reign of Louis XV. Pajou, best known as a leading Neoclassical sculptor, used the fluid washes to suggest the play of light on cascading water and carved stone, bringing a sense of movement and grandeur to the sheet. The composition features grac...
About the Artist
Augustin Pajou · 1730–1809
Augustin Pajou (1730–1809) was one of the foremost French sculptors of the second half of the eighteenth century, whose long and distinguished career bridged the Rococo grace of the Ancien Régime and the more sober classicizing spirit that emerged in the revolutionary and Napoleonic periods. Born in Paris into a family with artistic connections — his father was an ornamental sculptor — Pajou showe...