The Bone Player
Medium
Hand-colored lithograph
Dimensions
image: 25 x 19 3/4 in. (63.5 x 50.2 cm) sheet: 32 x 24 1/4 in. (81.3 x 61.6 cm)
Classification
Prints
Department
Drawings and Prints
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
Purchase, Leonard L. Milberg Gift, 1998
Accession Number
1998.416
Tags
Art Historical Context
In the mid-19th century, American genre painter William Sidney Mount captured the vibrant rhythms of rural life on Long Island, often featuring musicians from Black communities. *The Bone Player* (1857), a hand-colored lithograph after Mount's original painting, portrays a male musician skillfully playing the bones—rhythmic clappers fashioned from animal ribs, a staple of folk traditions. Collaborators François Delarue, Jean-Baptiste Adolphe Lafosse, and William Schaus brought this image to life through lithography, a printing technique that allowed for detailed reproductions enhanced by metic...
About the Artist
William Sidney Mount|François Delarue|Jean-Baptiste Adolphe Lafosse|William Schaus · 1807–1868
Comment on works: Portraits; still-life