The department’s early works are chiefly European. Starting with the second half of the 19th century, the collection becomes more balanced between European and American works on paper. The strong collection of Old Master prints includes 100 early German woodcuts and engravings, 50 of which are by Albrecht Dürer; and prints by Jacques Bellange and Rembrandt. Rare impressions include works by Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Canaletto, and Camille Pissarro; the deluxe edition of Max Klinger’s portfolio A Love; and an early impression of Edvard Munch’s 1895 Self-Portrait. The substantial American print collection comprises 1,500 wood engravings by Winslow Homer, Thomas Nast, and Frederic Remington. The core of the contemporary print collection is a large group of works made by American and European artists such as Louise Bourgeois, Enzo Cucchi, Eric Fischl, David Rabinowitch, and James Turrell.

Master drawings from the 16th century to the present include exceptional examples by Edgar Degas, Jean-Honoré Fragonard, Paul Klee, Adolphe Menzel, Pablo Picasso, and Odilon Redon. In the mid-1990s, the Museum began acquiring significant drawings by Abstract Expressionist painters, including William Baziotes, James Brooks, Arshile Gorky, Adolph Gottlieb, Franz Kline, Robert Motherwell, Jackson Pollock, and Richard Pousette-Dart. Another focus is drawings by 20th-century sculptors, among them Aristide Maillol and David Smith. The Museum has also acquired major works on paper by Jasper Johns.

Since 1974, Evan C. and Marjorie G. Horning have given the Museum over 230 works on paper from their collection of Old Master and modern prints and drawings. Evan Horning shared his lifelong passion for Old Master prints with his wife and colleague in biochemistry, Marjorie Horning. With keen eyes for objects of significance and an enthusiastic desire to learn about the history of art, the doctors built a comprehensive collection of important engravings, etchings, and woodcuts over the course of five decades. The Horning Collection includes several engravings by Albrecht Dürer, as well as significant prints by Sebald Beham, Jacques Callot, and Rembrandt van Rijn, among many other European works from the early modern period and beyond. View all works from the Marjorie G. and Evan C. Horning Collection.

View the online exhibition A Renaissance Couple: Stories from the Print Collection of Drs. Marjorie G. and Evan C. Horning.

The Stuart Collection was established in memory of Robert Cummins Stuart and Frances Wells Stuart by their daughter, Francita Stuart Koelsch Ulmer. It primarily focuses on the development of landscape drawing and watercolor in Britain during the 18th and 19th centuries. Through the work of such notable artists as John Constable, John Robert Cozens, Thomas Gainsborough, Samuel Palmer, J. M. W. Turner, and Richard Wilson, the collection chronicles visual responses to the natural world. During this time, artists shifted from topographical and picturesque depictions to intensely personal and romantic treatments of the landscape. This period was also known as the “golden age of watercolor”; British artists innovated the technique and raised its status to an independent art form.

Many of the artists represented in the Stuart Collection relate to the famed English landscape artist John Constable, known for vividly and realistically sketching in open air. The collection centers around a particular oil sketch by Constable, A View on the Banks of the River Stour, which showcases his fleeting atmospheric effect. It was owned by Rosa Allen Stuart Williams, inherited by her granddaughter Francita Stuart Koelsch Ulmer, and given to the MFAH in memory of James Chillman, Jr., the first director of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, in 2017. The Stuart Family has been associated with the Museum since its formation in 1900; Ella Stuart Heyer served as president of the Houston Art League, the founding organization of the MFAH. In 1926, the Museum Board invited Francita Ulmer’s great-grandmother Rosa Lum Allen to join the committee organized to provide funding for works of art. View all works from the Stuart Collection.

The Kelseys have donated more than 1,300 American prints and research materials to the MFAH, including nearly complete sets of Winslow Homer’s and Thomas Nast’s graphic oeuvres. These gifts of 400 works by Homer and 600 wood engravings by Nast span the artists’ careers and constitute the largest and most thorough collections of their work in any library or museum. In addition, the Kelseys have donated more than 300 wood engravings by Frederic Remington. View all works in the Mavis P. and Mary Wilson Kelsey Collection.

Co-founders of the prints and drawings department, Virginia and Ira Jackson donated 110 noteworthy prints to the Museum. Inspired by an art-history course on French printmaking, Virginia began collecting prints when she returned to graduate school as an adult, and her husband soon became an equally passionate collaborator. Together, they created an internationally renowned collection of more than 1,000 objects focusing on color lithographs created in Paris from 1890 to 1910, with a particular emphasis on the work of Pierre Bonnard and the Nabi artists. In addition to masterworks, the Jacksons also collected ephemera to present a fully rounded view of avant-garde art in France at the turn of the 20th century. View all works in the Virginia and Ira Jackson Collection.

In 1996, the MFAH acquired all of the individual prints, portfolios, and books that the Peter Blum Edition published from its inception in 1980 through 1994. Founded by Peter Blum, an American-born art critic, dealer, and filmmaker, the Peter Blum Edition focuses exclusively on publishing prints by contemporary American and European artists. Blum himself and Blumarts Inc., the parent company of the Peter Blum Edition, also donated all of the related preparatory material (more than 1,000 objects), providing a complete record of many of the print projects. View all works from the Peter Blum Edition Archive.

Online Exhibitions

• Funny Faces: Prints and Drawings at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
• The Usable Past: Reflections on American History 2000–2017

For information about past MFAH exhibitions, search the exhibitions archive database.

• Singular Multiples: The Peter Blum Edition Archive, 1980–1994

Art + Paper
MFAH members interested in prints and drawings are invited to join Art + Paper. Four to five times a year, September through June, Art + Paper members are invited to exhibition previews and openings, lectures by internationally renowned art historians and collectors, behind-the-scenes tours, workshops, and visits to artists’ studios and private collections. At the final meeting, Art + Paper members use their dues to acquire artworks for the Museum.
Join Art + Paper

The Annual Virginia and Ira Jackson Lecture
Virginia and Ira Jackson created an endowment in 1998 to fund an annual lecture at the Museum on the collecting and connoisseurship of prints and drawings. Free and open to the public, the Virginia and Ira Jackson Lecture is the only program of its type in the United States.

• A Conversation with Artist Shahzia Sikander about “Extraordinary Realities”

Viewing Prints and Drawings
Prints, drawings, and photographs may be viewed by students, scholars, artists, and other individuals in the Anne Wilkes Tucker Photography Study Center. The study center is open by appointment to groups of up to 20.