The Yale University Art Gallery announces the extraordinary gift/purchase of more than 190 late 18th- and 19th-century Italian drawings, watercolors, and sketchbooks from the collection of Roberta J. M. Olson and Alexander B. V. Johnson. 

Comprising over 400 individual sheets, this superb trove is among the finest in private hands anywhere in the world and represents a comprehensive, panoramic view of drawings by Italian artists made between 1780 and 1890, a period known as the Ottocento. Together, these works define and illuminate the multiple artistic trends at play in the art and politics of the Italian Peninsula during this pivotal century.