1839
ink
From the collection of National Gallery of Art
A New Year's Greeting is a 1839 ink by Adolph von Menzel, a Romanticism work, held at National Gallery of Art.
This sketch shows a crowded room with five stick-figure people. One woman holds a child, another plays a guitar, and a man in a hat stands apart. The walls are bare, and the scene feels cramped. Swirling, fancy German text wraps around the edges, like a border. The title says it’s a New Year’s greeting from 1839. The artist packed a lot of movement into tiny, quick lines—no colors, just black ink. The people look busy but also stiff, like a snapshot of a moment frozen in time. Next, check out cross-hatching to see how artists build shadows with lines.
Adolph Friedrich Erdmann von Menzel was a German Realist artist noted for drawings, etchings, and paintings.
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