Sketches of Classical or Biblical Figures
Medium
Pen and brown ink
Dimensions
6 1/4 x 4 3/4 in. (15.9 x 12.1 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
51.504.17
Tags
Art Historical Context
Rodolphe Bresdin, a 19th-century Frenchman and engraver, was renowned for his meticulous pen-and-ink drawings that evoked a dreamlike, visionary quality, bridging Romanticism and early Symbolism. This intimate sheet of *Sketches of or Biblical Figures*, executed in pen and brown ink on a modest 6 1/4 x 4 3/4 inches, captures Bresdin's fascination with timeless human forms. The subjects—men and women drawn from classical mythology or biblical narratives—reflect the era's revival of antiquity and religious themes, common among artists seeking spiritual depth amid industrialization. The brown in...
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...