BRITISH DRAWINGS FROM THE 20TH CENTURY PROJECT

The Ashmolean Museum is home to one of the world's most significant holdings of European drawings. This project focuses specifically on the Museum's rich collection of British drawings dating from 1900 to 1945, a transformative period in British art history that saw the shift from academic traditions toward Modernism.

The project is driven by the necessity to update and fully catalogue this substantial holding, which currently includes over 2,000 drawings representing more than 200 artists.

This collection encompasses works that illustrate the diverse artistic developments of the era, from early explorations of Post-Impressionism and Symbolism to the emergence of Vorticism and the establishment of influential art movements and schools.

It includes key works by some of the most pivotal figures of the period, such as Walter Sickert, Gwen John, Paul Nash, and Stanley Spencer, as well as significant collections of work by understudied artists like Katerina Wilcynski, Edna Clarke Hall, and Ursula Tyrwhitt. The collection offers crucial insights into the artists' working methods, their engagement with contemporary culture, and the history of patronage and collecting during this time.
 

Left: Boy with a blank expression, Gwen John, 1928. Centre: Study for 'Tipperary', Walter Sickert, 1914. Right: Opera 10, David Bomberg, 1919 © Ashmolean Museum

About the research project

This ongoing curatorial project, commenced in February 2023, is dedicated to producing a comprehensive, authoritative catalogue of the Ashmolean Museum’s British drawings spanning the years 1900 to 1945. The sheer scale of the collection, at over 2,000 works and constantly growing, necessitates a rigorous, systematic approach to both object analysis and historical research.

The project entails the physical examination of every drawing to update and standardize the Museum's database records concerning media, support, measurements, watermarks, and inscriptions. This foundational work is complemented by scholarly research to establish the provenance and the exhibition and publication history of each piece. Finally, works are professionally photographed where they lack images, providing high-resolution digital images for online access and future publications.

Research aims

To interrogate and evaluate the material and visual evidence presented by British drawings from the first half of the 20th century so as to produce an authoritative, comprehensive collections catalogue. This involves a detailed, two-pronged approach:

• Object-Specific Research: To identify and interpret drawings as material objects and visual images created for particular purposes. Each drawing or series is provided with a short research description (approximately 700 completed to date) that aims to situate the work within the artist’s broader oeuvre. This includes identifying related works, establishing contexts, and outlining the sitter’s biography in the case of portraits. 
• Advancing Curatorial Scholarship: To advance our understanding of this collection using museum-based research methods. The project promotes the significance of research that inevitably highlights individual artists or specific objects for deeper investigation. 

The ultimate aim is to create a fully catalogued and researched resource, with the new and rich content eventually feeding into the Ashmolean’s online collections, making the research results accessible to the wider public and scholarly community.