The Department of Prints and Drawings, ranked as one of the largest and best print room collections in existence (alongside the Albertina in Vienna, the Paris collections and the Hermitage in St. Petersburg in Russia), holds the national collection of Western prints and drawings, with its own exhibition gallery in Room 90, where the displays and exhibitions change several times a year. Unlike many such collections, the holdings are easily accessible, to the general public, in the Study Room.
Founded in 1808, the prints and drawings collection, with approximately 50,000 drawings and over two million prints, has grown, since its foundation, to international renown as one of the richest and most representative collections in the world. The collection of drawings, covering the period from the 14th century to the present, includes many works of the highest quality by the leading artists of the European schools.
The collection of prints, covering the tradition of fine printmaking, from its beginnings in the 15th century up to the present, has near complete holdings of most of the great names before the 19th century. Clayton Mordaunt Cracherode, Richard Payne Knight, John Malcolm, Campbell Dodgson, César Mange de Hauke and Tomás Harris have been key benefactors to the department while writer and author Louis Alexander Fagan, who worked in the department from 1869 to 1894, also made significant contributions to the department in form of his Handbook to the Department, as well as various other books about the museum, in general.
The groups of drawings includes works by Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael and Michelangelo, (including his only surviving full-scale cartoon) as well as Peter Paul Rubens, Rembrandt, Claude and Jean-Antoine Watteau. There are also largely complete collections of the works of all the great printmakers including Rembrandt and Francisco Goya.
The Albrecht Dürer collection consists of 138 drawings (one of the finest in existence) as well as 99 engravings, 6 etchings and most of his 346 woodcuts.
More than 30,000 British drawings and water colors include important examples of works by William Hogarth, Paul Sandby, J.M.W. Turner, Thomas Girtin, John Constable, John Sell Cotman, David Cox, James Gillray, Thomas Rowlandson, Francis Towne and George Cruikshank, as well as all the great Victorians. The collection also contains the unique set of water colors by John White, a pioneering colonist and the first British artist in America and first European to paint Native Americans.
The approximately million British prints including more than 20,000 satires and outstanding collections of works by William Blake and Thomas Bewick. The great, 11-volume Catalogue of Political and Personal Satires, preserved in the Department of Prints and Drawings in the British Museum, compiled between 1870 and 1954, is the definitive reference work for the study of British Satirical prints.
Over 500,000 objects from the department are now on the online collection database, many with high-quality images. In 2011, The acquisition of a complete set of Pablo Picasso‘s Vollard Suite was enabled by a donation of £1 million to the museum.
Department of Prints and Drawings: Room 90,British Museum, Great Russell Street, London WC1B 3DG, England. Tel: +44 (0)20 7323 8000 and +44 20 7323 8299. Website: www.britishmuseum.org. Open daily, 10 AM – 5 PM (last entry at 4:45 PM) and on Fridays until 8:30 PM (last entry at 8:15 PM). Admission is free. Coordinates: 51°31′10″N 0°7′37″W. Entry to the Museum is via the Main entrance on Great Russell Street or the Montague Place entrance.