Paintings, Prints and Drawings

The Wellcome Library's Paintings, Prints and Drawings contain over 100 000 prints, drawings, paintings, photographs and other media, ranging in date from the 14th century to the present, and geographically from Japan and China in the east through Tibet and India to Turkey, Europe and the Americas, with smaller collections dealing with Africa and Australasia.

Most of the works in Paintings, Prints and Drawings were acquired by Henry S Wellcome and his agents between about 1890 and 1936, but new accessions are received each year by gift and by purchase. In accordance with Wellcome's philosophy, the works show the historical and cultural contexts of medicine as well as internal developments in medical techniques and practices.

Paintings, Prints and Drawings form a documentary resource rather than an art collection or an art-history collection: they take their name from iconography, which is the study of the subjects of pictures. The 1500 paintings include an altarpiece of a dream of miraculous transplantation performed by Saints Cosmas and Damian (Burgos, c.1495); a painting of St Elizabeth visiting a hospital by Adam Elsheimer (c.1598); and 50 Tibetan thankas. Photographs include John Thomson's original negatives of China, Cambodia, Thailand and Cyprus (c.1870). Prints include caricatures, portraits, records of the physical environment and sacred subjects. The poster collection includes almost 3000 AIDS posters from the late 1980’s to the later 1990’s and constitute the 4th largest collections. Drawings include works by artists as diverse as Michelangelo, the ethnographer Horatio Robley, and William Heath Robinson.