Sketches of Bodices with Bows and a Bouffant Skirt
Medium
Pen and black ink, and graphite
Dimensions
Sheet: 6 3/4 x 9 11/16 in. (17.1 x 24.6 cm)
Classification
Ornament & Architecture|Drawings
Department
Drawings and Prints
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
The Elisha Whittelsey Collection, The Elisha Whittelsey Fund, 1957
Accession Number
57.559.6(7v)
Art Historical Context
This delicate sheet of sketches captures the opulent world of late 18th-century French, featuring intricate designs for bodices adorned bows and a voluminous bouffant skirt. around 1785–90 using pen and black ink with graphite, the drawings showcase the preparatory artistry behind high-society attire. Attributed to anonymous French artists of the 18th and 19th centuries, with possible involvement from Antoine Caire-Morand, works hail from the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Drawings and Prints department, part The Elisha Whittelsey Collection. the waning years of the Ancien Régime, just before ...
About the Artist
Anonymous, French, 18th century|Antoine Caire-Morand|Anonymous, French, 19th century · 1700–1800
The artist known as Anonymous, French, 18th century, represents a collective of unidentified talents active roughly between 1700 and 1800, a period of profound artistic evolution in France from the opulent Rococo to the austere dawn of Neoclassicism and Revolutionary fervor. Little is documented about their personal training or mentors, as their anonymity obscures individual biographies, though th...