British Museum Department of Prints and Drawings
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
|
Related e |
|
Featured: |
The Department of Prints and Drawings at the British Museum holds the national collection of Western Prints and Drawings.
It ranks as one of the largest and best print room collections in existence alongside the Albertina in Vienna, the Musée du Louvre collections and the Hermitage. The holdings are easily accessible to the general public in the Study Room, unlike many such collections. The Department also has its own exhibition gallery in Room 90, where the displays and exhibitions change several times a year.
Since its foundation in 1808 the Prints and Drawings collection has grown to international renown as one of the richest and most representative collections in the world. There are approximately 50,000 drawings and over two million prints. The collection of drawings covers the period from the 14th century to the present, and includes many works of the highest quality by the leading artists of the European schools. The collection of prints covers the tradition of fine printmaking from its beginnings in the 15th century up to the present, with near complete holdings of most of the great names before the 19th century.
There are magnificent groups of drawings by Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, Michelangelo, (including his only surviving full-scale cartoon), Dürer (a collection of 138 drawings is one of the finest in existence), Peter Paul Rubens, Rembrandt, Claude and Watteau, and largely complete collections of the works of all the great printmakers including Dürer (99 engravings, 6 etchings and most of his 346 woodcuts), Rembrandt and Goya. More than 30,000 British drawings and watercolours include important examples of work by Hogarth, Sandby, Turner, Girtin, Constable, Cotman, Cox, Gillray, Rowlandson and Cruikshank, as well as all the great Victorians. There are about a million British prints including more than 20,000 satires and outstanding collections of works by William Blake and Thomas Bewick.
See also
