Ashmolean Museum: Department of Western Art: The Print Room

	Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology The Collections Department of Western Art
	The Print Room

The Print Room of the Department of Western Art is open to the public for the study and enjoyment of drawings and prints. It houses one of the finest collections in Britain from the fifteenth century to the present day. A large proportion of these was given to the University of Oxford by a few prominent benefactors in the nineteenth century, but during the tenure of Sir Karl Parker as Keeper of the Department (1934-62) the Print Room was established on its present basis and many more drawings, by both old masters and nineteenth-century artists, were acquired by gift and purchase. Most Western European Schools are now well represented.

Opening Hours:
Tuesday to Saturday:
10am-1pm and 2pm-4pm.

Closed:

Sunday and Monday

from Christmas Eve to the day after Boxing Day Bank Holiday

Good Friday to Easter Monday

St Giles's Fair (Monday and Tuesday following first Saturday in September).

Address:
Western Art Print Room
Ashmolean Museum
Beaumont Street
Oxford OX1 2PH

Tel: 01865 278049
(direct line for the Print Room)
Fax: 01865 278056

E-mail: waprintroom@ashmus.ox.ac.uk

At the heart of the collection is a large, representative group of drawings by Raphael and Michelangelo, which was acquired by public subscription in 1842 from the celebrated collection of the portrait painter Sir Thomas Lawrence. Some years later, in 1855, there arrived the extraordinary gift from the collector Chambers Hall, including superb series of prints and drawings by Claude, the Ostade family and Rembrandt, as well as five sheets of drawings by Leonardo. In 1863, many of the prints and drawings from the enormous bequest of Francis Douce (d. 1834) were transferred from the Bodleian Library. Douce was particularly interested in Northern art of the Renaissance, and the bequest included important drawings and prints by Dürer and other German, French and Netherlandish masters. The deposit in 1985 of the collection of Guercino drawings belonging to Sir Denis Mahon made the Ashmolean a principal repository of the work of this brilliant seventeenth-century draughtsman.

	The collection of English drawings and watercolours also has its roots in the Douce and Chambers Hall collections and has been much enriched by subsequent gifts and purchases. It contains strong groups of works by Rowlandson, Girtin, Cozens, Cotman, Sandby and Cox. The group of drawings by Samuel Palmer, bought by Sir Karl Parker before the artist became as popular as he is now, is second to none, and works by the Pre-Raphaelites are also numerous, including over one hundred by Burne-Jones.	Visiting the Print Room I The Print Room is open to members of the public, students and visiting scholars alike. There is normally no need to make an appointment, but since space is limited, it may be advisable to do so if you are making a special journey to Oxford. Visitors wishing to make notes are requested to use pencil. For reasons of conservation, access to the drawings by Michelangelo, Raphael and Leonardo is restricted, and anyone wishing to see them is requested to apply to the Keeper in writing in advance.
	Of particular interest to the University are the gifts of John Ruskin, Slade Professor of Fine Art at Oxford in the 1870s and 1880s. His collection was used to illustrate his lectures and the teaching in the School of Art that bears his name. It includes some one hundred and fifty of his own drawings and seventy-seven sheets by J.M.W. Turner.

Visiting the Print Room II
As the Diploma Collection of the Royal Society of Painter-Printmakers is still in course of arrangement, visitors wishing to see this collection are asked to make an appointment with the Print Room Supervisor. Equally visitors wishing to consult the Hope Collection of Engraved Portraits are advised that they may need to give twenty-four hours notice of what they wish to see.

Among the holdings of works by twentieth-century artists, there are sixty-seven caricatures by Sir Max Beerbohm, a representative group of drawings by Sickert and the Camden Town School and the Lewin Gift of John Piper preparatory material. Thereafter the collection concentrates on the figurative tradition in drawing, and on twentieth-century British wood engraving. It includes the archival collections of a number of engravers such as Gertrude Hermes, George Mackley, Robin Tanner and Leon Underwood. This has been augmented in recent years by the deposit of the Diploma Collection of the Royal Society of Painter- Printmakers. For the livre d'artiste, visitors may consult items in the Christopher Hewett collection.

During the 1950s and 1960s, the Print Room became one of the principal centres for the study of Impressionism, thanks to the donation of the Pissarro family collection. This comprises paintings, prints, drawings, books and letters by Camille, Lucien, Orovida and other members of the Pissarro family. The Ashmolean also holds the most comprehensive collection in Britain of nineteenth and early twentieth-century Russian paintings and drawings, much of which was given by Mikhail Braikevitch in 1949, including ballet designs by Bakst, Benois and Korovin. A fine group of drawings by Leonid Pasternak was presented by his daughters in 1958. The Talbot Collection contains a remarkable range of Russian topographical material, especially prints of St Petersburg. Dr Grete Ring's bequest of nineteenth-century German and French drawings, including works by Caspar David Friedrich and Edgar Degas, came to the Ashmolean in 1954. It forms the nucleus of a collection of nineteenth-century German drawings hardly equalled outside Germany.

Visiting the Print Room III
Members of the curatorial staff of the Department are usually available on Wednesday afternoons between 2 and 4pm in the Print Room to give opinions on works of art brought in by members of the public. No comment on valuation can be made, and opinions are given on the understanding that neither the University nor any individual can accept liability for any opinion expressed.

Principal Catalogues and Studies:

Of primarily historical interest, but still containing items of great artistic value, are two print collections formed in the first half of the nineteenth century. Alexander Hendras Sutherland (d. 1820) and his wife grangerized folio editions of Clarendon's History of the Rebellion and Burnet's History of His Own Time with over nineteen thousand portraits and topographical views illustrating the text, which were presented by Mrs Sutherland in 1838. The Revd F.W. Hope amassed a vast collection of topographical prints and portraits of British and foreign sitters, which he presented to the University in 1850.

	A number of the drawings by Samuel Palmer are currently being conserved in preparation for an exhibition to be held at the British Museum. Works by Palmer will still be available to view in the Print Room, but visitors wishing to see specific drawings are advised to call 01865 278049 in advance of their visit to confirm that these will be available.
	An extensive collection of drawings of Oxford, made for the Oxford Almanacks, is on deposit from the Oxford University Press. The Ashmolean does not have a specialised collection of local topography. Visitors interested in Oxford topography should contact the Centre for Oxfordshire Studies in the Central Library, Westgate (Tel. 01865 815509).

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Last updated: jcm/28-oct-2005