Related Resources

This section points to collections related to fine prints in and beyond the Library of Congress, as well as selected resources and tools for researching artist print-related subjects including printmaking history, artist/printmakers, printmaking process definitions and identification, and published resources relating to Library of Congress fine print collections.

Prints & Photographs Division

Collections related to the Fine Prints Collection with overlapping or related artists, content, intended audiences, or techniques listed below.

Popular Graphic Arts (summary & search)
15,000 historical prints (ca. 1700-1900) by such printmakers and publishers William Birch, Currier & Ives, José Guadalupe Posada, L. Prang & Co., etc. Also see related research guide Popular Graphic Art Prints at the Library of Congress (1600s-1970s).
Artist Posters (summary & search)
85,000 posters by such artists as Will Bradley, Jules Chéret, David Klein, Alphonse Mucha, Maxfield Parrish, Ethel Reed, Louis Rhead, Henri de Toulouse Lautrec, and Wes Wilson.
WPA Posters (summary & search)
Over 900 New Deal era Work Projects Administration (WPA) posters by such artists as Vera Bock, Stanley Thomas Clough, Richard Floethe, Katherine Milhous, Robert Muchley, Don Chester Powell, Louis B. Siegriest, and Anthony Velonis.
Master Drawings (summary & search)
About 5,000 artists’ drawings, mostly from the 19th and 20th centuries. Over 3,400 are by Joseph Pennell with additional drawings by artists including Leonetto Cappiello, Charles Keene, Rockwell Kent, Joseph Pennell, Cândido Portinari, Martín Ramírez, and James McNeil Whistler.
Documentary Drawings (summary & search)
Over 3,000 artist’s drawings dating from the 18th to 20th century by such artists as William Birch, Kenyon Cox, John Rubens Smith, and Elihu Vedder.

Asian Division

Japanese Rare Book Digital Collection
Digitized examples from the Japanese Rare Book Collection which includes some 6,000 titles that span diverse genres, including the fine arts and some 800 illustrated books. The Noyes Collection, part of a major gift to the Library in 1905 by Crosby Stuart Noyes (1825–1908), consists of over 250 richly illustrated books that contain artwork by Hokusai, Hiroshige, and other ukiyo-e artists from the 18th and 19th centuries. Other notable books include an 1864 illustrated woodblock-print edition of The Tale of Genji, widely considered the world’s first novel, and four titles of Nara ehon (Nara picture books), a style of manuscript book with hand-painted color illustrations produced between the 16th and 17th centuries.

Rare Book & Special Collections Division

Rare Book & Special Collections Digitized Materials
Digitized portions from the Rare Book & Special Collections Division collections which include Incunabula (books printed before 1501) to contemporary works, including two collections devoted to book arts; the Fine Press Collection and the Artists’ Books Collection, as well as several related archives. Artists represented include Albrecht Dürer, William Blake, John James Audubon, Leonard Baskin, and Claire Van Vliet, to name a few. The Rosenwald Collection reflects the history of book illustration from the 15th to 20th century, and the Aramont Collection the history of 20th livre d’artiste and the artist illustrated book.

Many public institutions hold artist prints including those listed below who preserve major, public collections of fine prints.

These published resources, including books, articles, and online resources, may assist in researching and exploring the histories, contexts, and technical creation of the images found in the Library's Fine Print Collections. The book titles listed among the resources below link to fuller bibliographic information in the Library of Congress Online Catalog. Links to additional online content are provided when available. The listed publications are available for viewing in the Prints & Photographs Reading Room.

General Resources in Prints and Printmaking

General Bibliographies and Artist/Printmaker Oeuvre Catalogs

Clark Institute Library Research Guide: The Print: History Theory and Practice.
Includes bibliographies divided by such categories as Historical Surveys; Iconography; Signatures, Monograms, and Collector’s Marks, etc.
The Print Council of America: Studying Prints
Sections include Printmaking Techniques, Authenticity, Care of Prints, Defining a Print, Value, and Selected Publications.
Print Council of America - Search Oeuvre Catalogues
An online edition of The Print Council Index to Oeuvre-Catalogues of Prints by European and American Artists by Timothy A. Riggs...the database curently includes entries for European and American prints, print publishers, drawings, and photographs; and Japanese prints and photographs.
International Foundation for Art Research - Catalogues Raisonnes database

Printmaking Processes

Printmaking Processes: A Webliography (Library of Congress Prints & Photographs Division).
Visual Materials: Processing & Cataloging Bibliography (Library of Congress Prints & Photographs Division)
Section on Media and Format Identification and History lists sources of information.
Metropolitan Museum of Art – What is Printmaking?
International Fine Print Dealers Association (IFPDA) – Basics/What is a Print?
Graphic Atlas (Rochester Institute of Technology, Image Permanence Institute)
Offers visual and descriptive tools for identifying and comparing print, photographic, and photomechanical techniques.

Books: Prints, Printmakers, & Printmaking Techniques

The Print in the Western World by Linda C. Hults
Call Number: NE400 .H79 1996
ISBN: 0299137007
Published/Created: 1996-06-15
The Print in the Western World is a comprehensive history of the print from its origins in the fifteenth through the late twentieth century.
Prints and People; a Social History of Printed Pictures by A. Hyatt Mayor
Call Number: NE400 .M3
ISBN: 0870991086
Published/Created: 1971-01-01
This engagingly-written classic stretches from the invention of paper in China to American Scene printmakers of the 20th century.
Prints and Printmaking by Antony Griffiths
Call Number: NE400 .G74 1996
ISBN: 0520207149
Published/Created: 1996-09-01
A print is a pictorial image that has been produced by a process that enables it to be multiplied, and many of the best-known works by some of the world's greatest artists are prints...
Prints and Their Makers by Phil Sanders
Call Number: NE860 .S23 2020
ISBN: 9781616898182
Published/Created: 2020-10-27
Prints and Their Makers invites art enthusiasts on a tour of the top printmaking workshops around the world. Master printer Phil Sanders places today's fine art printmaking in the context of printing traditions and techniques developed over more than a thousand years.
How to Identify Prints by Bamber Gascoigne
Call Number: NE850 .G37 2004
ISBN: 0500284806
Published/Created: 2004-05-17
Since its first publication in 1986, this comprehensive guide has established itself as the essential reference book for print and book collectors, dealers in prints and illustrated books, art librarians, art professors and students, and everyone interested in graphic art.
How Prints Look by William M. Ivins; Marjorie B. Cohn
Call Number: NE863 .I9 1987
ISBN: 0807066478
Published/Created: 1987-08-15
This...is the classic introduction to appearances of various types of prints and the techniques involved in producing them.
The Printed Picture by Richard Benson
Call Number: N5300 .B54 2008
ISBN: 9780870707216
Published/Created: 2008-10-01
The Printed Picture traces the changing technology of picture-making from the Renaissance to the present, focusing on the vital role of images in multiple copies.

Library of Congress Publications

Research Guides

Fine Prints Filed by Artist Name in the Library of Congress
An overview of the largest body of artist prints in the division's collections -- approximately 44,000 prints that are organized by century and artist in the Fine Print filing series and items and groups of prints which have been individually acquired in recent decades up through the current day.
National Exhibition of Prints (1943-1977) at the Library of Congress
A summary of the portion of Library of Congress prints acquired through a series of 25 shows called the National Exhibition of Prints between 1943 and 1977. These shows engaged new audiences with the art of printmaking in a spectrum of styles from Social Realism to Abstract Expressionism and wide-ranging techniques that included lithographs, woodcuts, etchings, engravings, and screenprints.

Online Articles

Collections of Works of Art on Paper in the Library of Congress
Washington Print Club Quarterly 47, no. 4 (Winter 2011-2012): 2-28.
Special issue dedicated to Library of Congress resources.
Opinionated Art (Library of Congress Prints & Photographs Division)
Overview based on a display of a display of issue-driven "opinionated art."

Library of Congress Exhibitions Featuring Fine Print Collections

Art in Action: Herblock and Fellow Artists Respond to Their Times
Features selections from the Library’s collection of Herblock editorial cartoon drawings alongside prints, posters, and drawings by Eric Avery, Sandow Birk, Alexander Calder, Jacques Callot, Enrique Chagoya, Shepard Fairey, Juan Fuentes,Francisco de Goya, Käthe Kollwitz, Kerry James Marshall, Leopoldo Méndez, John Isaiah Pepion, Favianna Rodriguez, Helen Zughaib, and others.
Creative Space: Fifty Years of Robert Blackburn's Printmaking Workshop
Includes a key selection work by MacArthur Award-winning master printer Bob Blackburn and a dazzling array of prints by collaborators and students, as well as friends and colleagues.
World War I: American Artists View the Great War
Includes prints, posters, and drawings by such artists as Maurice Becker, James Montgomery Flagg, George Bellows, Kerr Eby, and Joseph Pennell.

Blog Posts

Selected Books Featuring Library of Congress Fine Print Collections

Primarily books co-published by the Library of Congress featuring works Prints & Photographs Division fine prints collections.

American Prints in the Library of Congress by Library of Congress Staff; Rand Evans; Ruth Leys
ISBN: 0801810779
Published/Created: 1970-08-01
Most of the entries in this print publication are also searchable as item-level online records in the Library of Congress online catalogs. Relatedly, also see our online research guide National Exhibition of Prints (1943-1977) at the Library of Congress.
Cherry Blossoms by Mari Nakahara; Katherine Blood; Carla D. Hayden (Foreword by)
ISBN: 9781588346841
Published/Created: 2020-02-11
Original prints, drawings, and photographs from the Library of Congress collections illuminate the story of Washington, DC's landmark cherry (sakura) trees and how they came to the nation's capital as a symbol of friendship with Japan.
David Roberts by Debra N. Mancoff
ISBN: 0764910299
Published/Created: 2003-01-01
Presents Roberts' hand-colored lithographs and related artworks that focus on scenes from an arduous 1838 trip made to the Near East. With the goal of bringing home a clear and accurate visual record of the region, he returned with a portfolio he described
Eyes of the Nation by Vincent Virga; Alan Brinkley (Commentaries by)
ISBN: 9781593730352
Published/Created: 2004-10-04
An incomparable visual history of the United States--engrossing in its narrative, pictorially sumptuous, and exhilarating (if occasionally sobering) in its epic sweep across five centuries. Never before has America's past been made so intriguingly accessible, both to the eyes and to the mind.
Floating World of Ukiyo-e by Katherine L. Blood; James Douglas Farquhar
ISBN: 0810941694
Published/Created: 2001-09-01
Taking a fresh look at colorful woodblock prints from the popular Japanese art form called ukiyo-e, this exhibition catalogue introduces the previously little-seen collection held by the Library of Congress.
Life of the People by Harry L. Katz (Editor); Bernard Reilly (Contribution by); Garnett McCoy (Contribution by)
ISBN: 0844409936
Published/Created: 1999-01-01
Companion catalogue for Library of Congress exhibition featuring work by such artists as Thomas Hart Benton, George Bellows, Isabel Bishop, Diego Rivera, Clare Leighton, Mabel Dwight, Raphael Soyer, and Charles White.

Fine Print Collections in the Library of Congress

Prints & Photographs: Ask a Librarian