Study of Young Girls
Medium
Pen and black ink
Dimensions
2 13/16 x 4 in. (7.1 x 10.2 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, 1950
Accession Number
50.575.14
Tags
Art Historical Context
Rodolphe Bresdin’s “Study of Young Girls” is a compact pen-and-black-ink drawing that rewards close looking. Barely larger than a postcard, the work distills the artist’s attention into a few economical lines that suggest youthful figures without elaborate setting or narrative. Its modest size and classification as a drawing indicate it was likely made as a quick observation or preparatory note rather than a finished exhibition piece. Executed in pen and ink, the medium allowed Bresdin to explore crisp contours and subtle tonal variations with great immediacy. Such studies were essential tool...
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...