The Farm
Medium
Pen and black ink
Dimensions
3 x 5 5/8 in. (7.6 x 14.3 cm)
Classification
Drawings
Department
Drawings and Prints
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
The J.B. Neumann Collection, Gift of Dr. Franz H. Hirschland, 1951
Accession Number
51.504.4
Tags
Art Historical Context
Rodolphe Bresdin’s *The Farm* offers an intimate glimpse into a pastoral scene rendered with remarkable precision in pen and black ink. Though the exact date remains unknown, the small drawing—just 3 by 5⅝ inches—captures the quiet rhythms of rural life, with cows grazing among trees and human figures going about their daily tasks. The compact scale invites close looking, rewarding viewers with the fine, deliberate lines that define each element of the landscape. As a work on paper in the Metropolitan Museum’s Drawings and Prints department, *The Farm* highlights the expressive potential of i...
About the Artist
Rodolphe Bresdin · 1822–1885
Rodolphe Bresdin (1822–1885) was a visionary French draughtsman, engraver, and lithographer whose fantastical imagery captured the empathy of rural poverty and the wild exuberance of the imagination. Born on August 12, 1822, in Montrelais near Le Fresne-sur-Loire in Brittany, he grew up in the Breton countryside amid its bardic folklore traditions before a family dispute left him homeless in Paris...