Please address specific questions about the Prints and Drawings Collection to: Scott Wilcox‚ Curator of Prints and Drawings or Gillian Forrester‚ Associate Curator of Prints and Drawings 203 432 2840 203 432 2841 (study room) 203 432 9613 F pdbac@pantheon.yale.edu

The Center's Department of Prints and Drawings is home to a collection of more than 20,000 drawings and watercolors and 30,000 prints. The collection offers a comprehensive view of the development of British graphic art, beginning with the great Elizabethan and Jacobean miniaturists, Nicholas Hilliard and Isaac Oliver, and extending into the twenty-first century. The emphasis is on the flowering of the British watercolor school in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The collection was begun by Paul Mellon, whose love of British sporting art is reflected by his acquisition of fine drawings by James Seymour, Sawrey Gilpin, James Ward, and George Stubbs, and an exhaustive selection of sporting prints. Over the years, Mr. Mellon's acquisition of complete collections assembled by distinguished connoisseurs expanded the scope of the collection and came to form its heart. Among the outstanding block acquisitions are the Girtin collection, purchased in 1970, which centers on the work of the romantic watercolorist Thomas Girtin, and the Thomas Edmond Lowinsky collection of figure drawings, purchased in 1975, which includes sheets by Allan Ramsay, Richard Wilson, and Henry Fuseli. These core building blocks of the collection have been supplemented by the ongoing acquisition of individual works by artists such as Sir James Thornhill, William Hogarth, Paul Sandby, Alexander and John Robert Cozens, and Sir Joshua Reynolds. There are nearly four hundred lively drawings by Thomas Rowlandson, and William Blake is represented by one of the foremost collections of his illuminated books, in rare combination with his drawings, watercolors, tempera paintings, and prints. Of the nineteenth-century masters, John Constable, Samuel Palmer, Peter DeWint, David Cox, Richard Parkes Bonington, John Ruskin, and the Pre-Raphaelites are all well represented. The limitless variety of J.M.W. Turner can be seen in what is perhaps the best balanced group of watercolors by him outside London, together with the important collection of prints by and after Turner assembled by Sir Stephen Courtauld. The collection of large-scale "exhibition" watercolors—rare outside of England—culminates in John Frederick Lewis's masterwork A Frank Encampment, of which Ruskin wrote: "One day men will come from far away, and will go back to their homes saying 'I have seen it'." Areas of specialized interest include architectural drawings, topographical prints, caricatures, mezzotint portraits, and Shakespearean subjects. The architectural collection includes portfolios from the studios of Robert Adam, Sir William Chambers, Sir Jeffry Wyatville, Thomas Hope, and A.W.N. Pugin. Among the many topographical prints, the Nathan collection documents the architectural transformation of London over three centuries. In 1970 Paul Mellon acquired the Pierpont Morgan collection of mezzotints, which traces the "English manner" of engraving from its earliest appearance in seventeenth-century Holland to its heyday in England at the end of the eighteenth century. Six years later, the Center acquired a large group of drawings and prints from the American Shakespeare Theater of Stratford, Connecticut, which constitutes an important archive of Shakespearean iconography. Recently, the Department has expanded its representation of twentieth-century graphic art, with important acquisitions of works by Walter Sickert, Henri Gaudier-Brezska, Duncan Grant, Paul Nash, Edward Burra, and Stanley Spencer. Forty watercolors and drawings by Augustus and Gwen John represent one of the largest collections of their work outside the United Kingdom. There is an equal number of sheets devoted to the decorations for the infamous cabaret club, the Cave of the Golden Calf. These include most of Spencer Gore's preparatory drawings for the murals, Eric Gill's design for the entrance sign, and Wyndham Lewis's magnificent watercolor study for his lost oil Kermesse. Among the prints are signature examples and portfolios by Edward Wadsworth, David Bomberg, C.R.W. Nevinson, John Banting, Keith Vaughan, Graham Sutherland, David Hockney, Eduardo Paolozzi, Lucian Freud, Frank Auerbach, Peter Doig, Langlands and Bell, and Gary Hume. The Study Room The Study Room is the principal means of access to prints, drawings, watercolors, rare books, manuscripts, and maps. It is open Tuesday–Friday, 10:00 am – 4:30 pm. No appointment is required.