Publisher's Synopsis
The Ashmolean Museum's collection of British drawings and watercolors is undoubtedly one of the richest in the world. Over 130 works are discussed here in this fully illustrated catalogue, including a dozen works loaned from private collections. Many of these works have never previously been published or exhibited. The full richness of the Ashmolean's collection is reflected here with drawings from the mid-seventeenth century through to the present day. Works by renowned masters including Rowlandson, Gainsborough, Blake, Palmer, Girtin, J. M. W. Turner, Edward Lear, Ruskin, and the Pre-Raphaelites feature, together with works from the twentieth century including Augustus John, Paul Nash, Walter Sickert and the Camden Town Group, Eric Kennington, Eric Ravilious, Ben Nicholson, Graham Sutherland, Wyndham Lewis, Ronald Searle, Gerald Scarfe, and David Hockney. Great British Drawings reveals the full breadth of achievement and inventiveness of British artists in all drawing media, from pencil, to pen and ink, to watercolor, as well as the fascinating history of British art over the course over three and a half centuries.
