The Prints and Drawings Study Room
The Prints and Drawings Study Room houses our fine collection of prints, drawings and watercolours, comprising more than 1,000 works and six centuries of the draughtsman’s and printmaker’s arts.
The study room is open to researchers and the general public by appointment only.
Due to essential building improvement works, the Prints and Drawings Study Room is currently closed to the public until summer 2024.
For research enquires please email: collections@barber.org.uk
We have outstanding drawings in our collection by varied artists such as Tess Jaray, Fra Bartolommeo, Rembrandt van Rijn, JMW Turner, Edgar Degas and Gwen John.
Prints include exceptional works by Albrecht Dürer, Francisco Goya, Italian and Flemish Renaissance masters and 19th-century and 20th-century artists from Pablo Picasso and Elizabeth Frink to Käthe Kollwitz.
Many of our prints and drawings can be viewed on our website, or on the University's Online Collections. We are still in the process of digitising our full collection of works on paper, so please bear with us.
A rotating selection of works on paper are displayed in our dedicated Print Bays (located in the Green and Beige galleries) – typically there are six print displays a year.
Explore our prints and drawings online:
John Brett (1831-1902)
Study of Warwick Castle (‘The White Waterlily’) Warwick, 1860 Watercolour on paper 254 x 355 mm Early on in his career, John Brett, the leading Pre-Raphaelite landscape artist, visited the West Midlands where he produced this view of Warwick Castle. This watercolour study is, along with an early sketch, the only record of a now … Read more
after Rubens, Peter Paul (1577-1640)
Portrait of Helena Fourment? Antwerp, 1630-1635 Drawing with black and red chalk heightened with white 561 x 351 mm Both the former attribution to Rubens and the identification of the sitter as Helena Fourment are doubtful, and compromised by poor condition. The traditional identification of the sitter as the artist’s second wife stems from the … Read more
Giovanni Migliara (1785-1837)
An Architectural Capriccio 1829 Pencil and watercolour 180 x 234 mm Migliara was a scenery painter who turned to small-scale works after 1810, owing to illness. His precise, jewel-like technique and theatrical settings found much favour with patrons in his native Milan and further afield. His works are extremely rare in Britain. As the title … Read more
Giovanni Battista Tiepolo (1696-1770)
Zephyrus and Flora Venice, about 1750 Pen, brown wash and black chalk on paper 23.9 x 33 cm Tiepelo made this drawing as a study for the principal figures in the ceiling fresco he painted for the Room of Mirrors in the Palazzo Labia in Venice. He also produced a small oil sketch of the … Read more
Sir William Orpen (1878-1931)
A Nude Girl Seated on a Bed London, 1899 Pen and ink, brown wash on paper 27.6 x 21.4 cm This is one of a number of studies that Orpen made of Emily Scobel, a model at the Slade School of Art where he was studying at this date. The drawings culminated in an oil … Read more
attributed to Paolo Cailiari (1528-1588)
Meekness Venice, 1575-7 Pen and brown wash heightened with bodycolour on blue paper 18.9 x 31.0 cm Related to the ceiling paintings of the same subject by Veronese in the Sala del Colegio of the Doge’s Palace, Venice. Purchased 1937 (No. 37.2) ShareTweetSharePin
Hubert Robert (1733-1808)
Study of a Tree with a Figure Paris, about 1780 Red chalk, over squaring in black chalk, on paper 385 x 524 mm Robert was a garden designer as well as a painter and trees formed an important part of his landscape subjects. He was also a prolific draughtsman, invariably using red chalk, a medium … Read more
The Prints and Drawing Study Room was created with the financial support of the DCMS/Wolfson Museums Improvement Fund.