Yale Center for British Art, which contains the most comprehensive collection of British art outside the United Kingdom, opens its doors. The collection includes paintings, sculpture, prints, drawings, rare books, and manuscripts that explore the development of British art, life, and thought from the Elizabethan era onward. Its particular strength lies in the period between the birth of William Hogarth (1697), the first major British-born painter, and the death of J. M. W. Turner (1851), who is arguably the most celebrated British painter of the nineteenth century. The Center and its ongoing programs were made possible by the generosity of Yale’s great philanthropist Paul Mellon (B.A. 1929). “Pumpkin with a Stable-lad,” 1774, by George Stubbs.
