Collections

Small hangs we put together around a subject, a season or a way of seeing. Each work is credited to the museum that released it.

Blue hourThe short interval after sunset, when the light goes cool and the outlines soften, drew painters and printmakers back again and again. These works hold that hour: moonlit harbours, evening streets and nocturnes in which blue does most of the work.12 works
Gardens and botanicalsFlowers were studied before they were painted for pleasure, and the two impulses run together here: the botanist's careful plate, the gardener's border, the still life cut from a summer morning. Most of these works were made to record a plant exactly; many ended up as much admired for their colour.24 works
Japanese woodblock printsUkiyo-e, pictures of the floating world, were made by teams: a publisher, a designer, a carver and a printer who laid each colour from its own block. Cheap in their day and collected avidly in Europe from the 1860s, they shaped Impressionism as much as any painting did.24 works
Still lifeA table, a vessel, a few things arranged under a window: still life gave painters a subject they could control completely, and they used it to test light, texture and the passing of time. The genre's quiet surface often carries a moral about abundance and decay.24 works
The seaHarbours, beaches and open water, from Dutch ships under heavy cloud to American coasts at midday. Painters went to the sea for its weather as much as its boats, and the shoreline became one of the places where open-air painting was worked out.24 works
WinterSnow simplifies a landscape and makes every colour in it count. These are winter scenes from several centuries and both sides of the world: skaters on frozen canals, snow on temple roofs, a road gone quiet in the cold.17 works
Portraits in paintFaces painted from life, from Renaissance panels to Gilded Age canvases. A portrait was a record, a likeness and often a statement of standing, and the best of them still hold the sitter's attention across a room.24 works
Index of American DesignBetween 1935 and 1942 a Federal Art Project employed artists to record American decorative and folk objects in exact watercolour renderings: weathervanes, quilts, toys, ceramics, carved figures. The result is a visual archive of everyday craft, painted with remarkable care.24 works
BirdsBirds turn up in every tradition gathered here: on Chinese scrolls, in Japanese prints, in natural-history plates and on American canvases. Some are observed with a naturalist's precision, others carry meanings of their own, such as the crane for long life.24 works
Cities and viewsStreets, bridges, skylines and squares: the city as painters and engravers saw it, often before photography could. Views of Venice, Paris, New York and Edo sit together here, made for travellers, for civic pride and for the plain pleasure of looking at a place.24 works

Movements