Rocky Landscape with Figures
ca. 1752–56
Medium
Black chalk
Dimensions
Sheet: 5 1/8 × 7 3/8 in. (13 × 18.7 cm)
Classification
Drawings
Department
Drawings and Prints
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
Bequest of James David Draper, 2019
Accession Number
2021.15.15
Art Historical Context
"Rocky Landscape with Figures" is a delicate black chalk drawing created by the French artist Augustin Pajou around 1752–56. Measuring just over five by seven inches, this intimate work captures a rugged natural scene animated by small human figures. As a sculptor best known for his neoclassical figures and decorative works at the court of Louis XVI, Pajou demonstrates here his skill as a draftsman, using the soft, velvety qualities of black chalk to suggest both the solidity of rock and the fleeting presence of figures within the landscape. Drawings such as this one offer valuable insight in...
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...