Metropolitan Museum of Art Guide: Tickets, Hours and 10 Paintings

1. Washington Crossing the Delaware

Emanuel Leutze · 1851

Emanuel Leutze collection

The standing Washington is the picture's most recognisable figure, but the crossing depends on the people working around him. Follow the oars, the boat's crowded edge and the pieces of ice: they make movement look difficult rather than effortless.

Leutze painted this scene in 1851, long after the Revolutionary War event. It is a constructed historical image, not an eyewitness record. The flag and the bright opening in the sky help the central boat read as a single public symbol, while the smaller boats extend the undertaking beyond one individual.

Primary museum record or research.

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2. The Death of Socrates

Jacques-Louis David · 1787

Jacques-Louis David collection

Socrates sits upright with one hand raised and the other reaching towards the cup. The people around him respond with grief, hesitation and physical withdrawal. David makes that difference in composure the centre of the scene.

Trace the hands before identifying the faces. The cup sits between two gestures, turning a small object into the point on which the larger story depends. The severe interior and clear arrangement of bodies give the painting its measured pace, even though its subject is a death.

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3. Aristotle with a Bust of Homer

Rembrandt van Rijn · 1653

Rembrandt van Rijn collection

A hand on a sculpted head creates the quiet contact at the heart of Rembrandt's picture. Aristotle's gaze does not simply follow that touch. His face turns into a space of thought, while the gold chain and richly worked clothing keep material success visibly present.

Look at the difference between living flesh, stone and metal. Rembrandt gives each a different response to light. The portrait invites reflection on learning, reputation and wealth, but its effect begins with this very concrete encounter between a person and an object.

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4. Madame X

John Singer Sargent · 1883 to 84

John Singer Sargent collection

The black dress initially reads as one decisive shape. Then the portrait becomes a study in smaller tensions: a pale shoulder, the angle of an arm, the head turned away and the hand placed against the table.

Sargent's sitter is Virginie Amélie Avegno Gautreau, identified in the museum's title. Rather than looking only for the face, follow the silhouette from head to hem. The spare background gives that outline unusual authority. The painting turns a formal social pose into an image that can feel both poised and physically strained.

Primary museum record or research.

5. Wheat Field with Cypresses

Vincent van Gogh · 1889

Vincent van Gogh collection

The wheat field spreads across the lower part of the canvas, while the cypresses rise against a restless sky. Van Gogh does not give each area the same kind of movement: short marks fill the field, darker strokes build the trees and larger curves animate the clouds.

Try following one colour as it moves between those areas. Blues and greens keep returning in new relationships to the yellow. This Met canvas is one particular work in a subject Van Gogh revisited; its museum record is the reference for the version illustrated here.

Primary museum record or research.

6. The Harvesters

Pieter Bruegel the Elder · 1565

Pieter Bruegel the Elder collection

Some workers bend to the harvest while others eat or rest beneath a tree. Bruegel lets those activities coexist without turning them into a single dramatic event. The changing distances matter: close figures and stalks open out towards fields, buildings and a far horizon.

Look for the paths that connect one task to another. They make the landscape feel inhabited and worked, rather than merely seen. A slow scan across the picture reveals how much of its story is carried by small actions away from the most prominent group.

Primary museum record or research.

7. Young Woman with a Water Pitcher

Johannes Vermeer · ca. 1662

Johannes Vermeer collection

One hand holds the window and the other rests on the pitcher. Between those gestures, the woman seems paused in an ordinary action. Vermeer makes the white headdress, the reflective metal and the patterned cloth register different kinds of light.

The painting is useful to approach after the larger historical scenes. Its concentration does not depend on a dramatic incident. Notice the shape of the open window and the quiet spacing around the figure. The room becomes legible through relationships between objects, surfaces and a momentary movement.

Primary museum record or research.

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8. The Gulf Stream

Winslow Homer · 1899; reworked by 1906

Winslow Homer collection

The damaged boat occupies the foreground with almost no room for escape. Sharks circle below, while distant weather and a small ship introduce possibilities that remain physically remote from the man on deck.

Homer painted the work in 1899 and reworked it by 1906, as the museum records. Look at how near and far are made to feel different: the sharp presence of the boat and water against the much smaller vessel on the horizon. The scene sustains uncertainty rather than resolving it into a clear rescue or ending.

Primary museum record or research.

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9. The Oxbow

Thomas Cole · 1836

Thomas Cole collection

Cole divides the view between a dark, rough slope and a broad valley where the river bends through cultivated land. The contrast is easy to see from a distance, but the transition between the two areas deserves closer attention.

Look for the small painter working within the landscape. His presence changes the view from an apparently untouched prospect into a picture being actively made. The canvas invites questions about cultivation and wilderness, while its weather and shifting light keep those ideas rooted in a particular-looking place.

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10. Self-Portrait with a Straw Hat

Vincent van Gogh · 1887

Vincent van Gogh collection

The hat gives the portrait a broad light frame, but the face is assembled from small marks that remain visibly separate. Van Gogh uses shifts of colour to turn the head and describe the beard, rather than hiding every stroke within a smooth surface.

Compare the direction of marks around the cheeks with those in the clothing and background. The picture's energy comes partly from those changes. The Met identifies this 1887 self-portrait with another painting, The Potato Peeler, on the reverse, a reminder that a canvas can have more than one history.

Primary museum record or research.