by Elle Graham-DixonA dusty A4 sheet of paper is the only indication that the Ashmolean even has a print room. Its doors spend most of their time locked and even an art enthusiast would be forgiven for being oblivious to its presence.
There is no doubt that the print room is a deliberately hidden treasure. It contains an unequalled collection of prints from Great Masters such as Raphael, Michelangelo and Hogarth, interspersed with lesser-known illustrations of social history. This is no ordinary museum space; its hushed interior is more akin to a Bodleian reading room than anything else.
The prints here have been almost entirely left out of the merry-go-round of large-scale exhibitions that engage with a wider public. In terms of aesthetics and conservation, blockbuster shows would not be the right context for these works. Easily damaged by light and humidity, this archive of drawings, prints and sketches has been treated with respect for their fragility.
The print room gives you the opportunity to engage with these works up close and unframed. A Leonardo drawing of a young girl and a unicorn, executed with economy of line can be placed in a well-lit room in front of you for your own personal viewing. An invaluable experience like this is a world away from the treatment of his drawings at the recent British Museum exhibition, where they were placed under high security for good reason.
The room contains prints and drawings from the fifteenth century up to the present day. It ranges from topographical maps of Oxford to the collection that Ruskin himself used as lecture aids in the 1870s. Of particular interest are the Hogarth prints and other eighteenth century caricatures. It was at this point that the reproductive potential of the print was first truly exploited. Looking at this work gives us a peek into an early form of our own culture of mass-produced images.
The original prints of The Harlot’s Progress (Hogarth) are fantastically detailed and rarely reproduced to actual size. At such close quarters we can access wonderful details, such as a background prostitute winking out at us, or a small black cat sniffing under the harlot’s skirt. The increased circulation of images like these helped to forge a mass media less under the thumb of the censors. The print has a different quality to great paintings. It is designed to speak directly to the public; up close and unframed or reproduced in a newspaper. Even decorative prints were often seen more as personal works of art, souvenirs for nostalgia.
Prints are more often illustrations of narratives than self-sufficient works of art. The success of images such as The Harlot’s Progress lie in their ability to relay the stories within them. To facilitate this, the print room provides the equivalent of a pictorial reading room, the catalogue: a library of hidden treasure at your disposal.
