Archives & Library

Library Collections

The library collections cover British painting, sculpture, drawing, prints, decorative arts, architecture and garden history from the medieval period to the present day. The collections on British artists and architects, the British and Irish country house and the eighteenth-century Grand Tour are particularly strong.

Deanna Petherbridge

Fifty books. This material has been fully catalogued on the Library and Photographic Archive catalogue.

The collection contains books on art and architecture by Deanna Petherbridge as well as catalogues of her own exhibitions and those that she curated. It reflects Petherbridge’s varied working life and is particularly rich in material on drawing.

The collection was donated to the Paul Mellon Centre by Deanna Petherbridge in November 2022.

The Centre also holds Deanna Petherbridge’s archive.

Books from the Petherbridge collection, 2023

Deanna Sheila Petherbridge (1939–2024) was an artist, writer, curator and educationalist, primarily concerned with drawing. She promoted the importance of drawing in relation to contemporary art practice. She was Professor of Drawing at the Royal College of Art from 1995 to 2001 and appointed Associate Fellow at the Warburg Institute in 2019. A retrospective exhibition of her drawings was held at the Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester in 2016. She was appointed CBE in 1996.