Head of a bearded man in a feathered cap

The majority of this collection of drawings formed by Dr Edmund Schilling was bequeathed to the British Museum through the Art Fund by his widow, Mrs Rosi Schilling, in 1993. Schilling was a former curator of the Stadelsches Kunstinstitut in Frankfurt, who emigrated to England in 1937. He was one of the few acknowledged specialists in this country on German graphic art, and built up his collection during the 1940s and 1950s in London when, Northern drawings were unfashionable and could be bought relatively inexpensively. His collection included drawings by major artists such as Hans Baldung and Lucas Cranach.