A couple holding hands lean toward each other as they gaze into one another’s eyes with affection.
Drawings D574 no. 9 Box D117
Acquired May 2024
A watercolor drawing of a scene in Westminster Hall with three judges presiding over a crowded courtroom.
Drawings D574 no. 7 Box D205
Acquired March 2024
Watercolor drawing of a grotesque old woman, with lines from Thomas Cambell’s poem “Pleasures of Hope” (1799) written in ink below: The world was sad, The garden was a wild, And man the hermit sigh’d ’till woman smil’d.
On the verso a cropped impression of Plate 21, from the Miseries of London, captioned with a letterpress text cut from the work: See BMSat 10865: At the corner of Chancery Lane a fashionably dressed man and a scavenger have collided violently: both register pain and anger. Hackney coachmen on a stand facing the end of the street watch with amusement. A man behind (left) chases his hat, 1 March 1807.
Drawings Un58 no. 99 Box D166
Acquired September 2023
Two gentlemen wearing academic caps stand looking at tomb effigy in a side chapel of a church. The one man who has a large belly and is gesturing toward the tomb, bears some resemblance to Samuel Johnson. To the right, man confronts a woman who seems prepared to deliver a backhanded slap with her fan.
A second drawing on the back of the sheet is of a street scene, with a carriage, horse-drawn omnibus, various couples promenading in the street with one man begging with hat in hand.
Drawings R79 no. 25 Box D146
Acquired May 2024
“A caricatured old man shown half-length to right, sipping from a small glass and his arms around a bottle, resting his elbows on a table, wearing tattered clothes and a hat over a scarf around his head; in an oval.”–British Museum online catalogue, description of the related print.
Drawings D574 no. 11 Box D117
Acquired June 2024
Album of watercolor drawings depicting exotic animals, copied by the artist Ann Rich from the first few parts of the Naturalist’s Pocket Magazine (London, 1798-1802).
72 798 R498
Acquired April 2024
An album of illustrations by various artists, probably compiled by a member of the Mordaunt family. The album contains views of coastlines and ports including Port Eliot, home of Mordaunt friends the Eliots of Port Eliot, in the Parish of St. Germans, Cornwall, drawings of ruins, rural scenes with livestock, and a pencil portrait of a girl aged about 10.
724 815M
Acquired May 2024
A large crowd of theatregoers file out of a theater and onto the street in a pouring rainfall and high winds that turns umbrellas inside out. One man has fallen and broken his lantern as a woman falls back over him as her shoes are being changed. The audience is a mix of classes, couples, old women, young boys, some carrying lanterns, one with a cane.
Drawer Drawings B995 no. 2
Acquired April 2024
A collection of 41 printed items that chronical the 1820 plot to murder the Prime Minister Lord Liverpool and his cabinet, so named for location where the thirteen conspirators meet near Edgware Road in London. The police learned of the plot through an informer, George Edwards, leading to a police trap in which one policeman, Richard Smithers, was killed but the plotters apprehended. The collection includes portraits of the plotters, views of the Cato Street area, broadsides describing the events and others with images and descriptions of the execution of five of the conspirators. Five other conspirators were transported to Australia. A drawing signed “Peter Jackson, July 31, 1960” is a 20th-century view of the exterior of the London building where the conspirators were discovered.
LWL MSS 52
Acquired January 2024
A watercolor drawing of a scene in Westminster Hall with three judges presiding over a crowded courtroom.
Drawings D574 no. 7 Box D205
Acquired March 2024