The Polish Prints and Drawings Room assembles works by Polish watercolour painters, draftsmen, and printmakers from the 16th century through the first quarter of the 20th century as well as works by foreign artists active in Poland during this period and Polonica. Its holdings presently number approximately 55,000 drawings and approximately 60,000 prints.

From its very inception, the National Museum in Warsaw maintained a print room alongside its painting and sculpture galleries. In the Museum opened in 1922 at Podwale Street, a collection of prints was exhibited at one of the rooms, as were watercolours and sketches from the late 18th and early 19th centuries. By 1925, the Museum owned 17,160 prints and 300 copper plates. The Prints and Drawings Department – along with the Numismatic, Sphragistics and Manuscripts Departments – were part of the Library, and the cartoons, watercolours, and pastels were subsumed under the Polish Painting Department. In 1932, some of the Museum’s collections – the Prints Room included – were moved to new facilities at 13 3 Maja Avenue. In 1937, a separate Prints and Drawings Department was created and received three exhibition rooms for its use. Come 1938, the collection included 24,000 prints, approximately 10,000 drawings by Polish artists as well as another 500 by foreign artists, and some 100 sketchbooks.

The Room’s first major acquisition came to it by way of the will of Cyprian Lachnicki (1902, died 1906), who bequeathed to the Museum not only an important gallery of paintings, but also several dozen prints and drawings by Polish artists (including works by Henryk Redlich, Cyprian Kamil Norwid, and Jan Nepomucen Lewicki) as well as foreign ones. In 1915, the collection was enriched by some pastels and watercolours by Polish painters from the first half of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century (a gift by Leopold Méyet), by more than 800 drawings by Polish artists from the second half of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, and by over 3,000 prints (including landscapes and portraits of Polish as well as foreign personages). Among the generous contributions to our collections, one might mention the one by Robert Wolff from 1913 – 12 Michel Elviro Andriolli cartoons to Pamiętniki kwestarza (The Memoirs of an Alms Collector) by Ignacy Chodźko – by the Towarzystwo Opieki nad Zabytkami Przeszłości (Society for the Protection of Historic Monuments) including the collections of Wiktor Gomulicki, Aleksander Kraushar, and Ludwik Szwede, and by the Warsaw Towarzystwo Zachęty Sztuk Pięknych (Society for the Encouragement of Fine Arts), including the collection of Mathias Bersohn; most of these bequests comprised works by Polish artists and Judaica.

To this very day, the core of the Polish Prints and Drawing Room collections is comprised in the collection of Dominik Witke-Jeżewski which passed to the Museum over the years of 1917–1938 (including cut-outs from printed Polish publications from the 16th and 17th centuries, several dozen traditional folk woodcuts, several hundred woodcut reproductions from the 19th century, and some 3,000 prints executed in various techniques between the 17th and 20th centuries, including important bodies of works by Jan Ziarnko, Jeremiasz Falck, Jean Pierre Norblin de la Gourdaine, Aleksander Orłowski, Jan Feliks Piwarski, Józef Pankiewicz, and Zofia Stankiewiczówna, portraits of Polish kings and major figures, views of Polish towns, and more than 4,500 drawings and watercolours by Polish artists from the 18th-20th centuries, including pieces by Józef Chełmoński, Juliusz Kossak, Piotr Michałowski, and Leon Wyczółkowski).

During the 1920s, the prints collection was enlarged appreciably thanks to the bequest by Michał Federowski and the gifts by Kazimierz Woźnicki, Władysław Alojzy Strzembosz, and Maria Róża née Kronenberg the Baroness Taube. Other important additions to the Museum’s holdings included the collection of Seweryn Smolikowski and the purchase of the drawings from Marcello Bacciarelli’s estate from Pius Weloński. The Museum also purchased a cartoon executed by Jan Matejko as he worked on the polychrome decorations of the Church of St Mary in Cracow and five watercolours by Zygmunt Vogel.

The 1930s saw the purchase of 26 plates with drawings by Bernardo Bellotto aka Canaletto. Franciszek and Józefa Krzyształowicz bequeathed to the Museum a body of drawings and watercolours by Stanisław Wyspiański, and Władysława Reynelowa – drawings and sketches by Polish painters from the 18th and 19th centuries. Consecutive benefactors (Hieronim Wilder, Jakub Potocki, Alina née Bondy Glassowa, Julia Stabrowska, and Bronisław Krystall) presented the Museum with prints and, first and foremost, with valuable drawings by Polish artists from the second half of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th. In 1936, the Management of the State Art Collections handed over to the Museum the estate of Jan Ciągliński; the Museum also purchased almost 1,000 works by Jacek Malczewski. During World War II, the National Museum in Warsaw provided a safe haven for the collection from Gołuchów and for several thousand Polish prints and drawings (16th-19th century) from Sucha amassed by the writer Józef Ignacy Kraszewski and remaining in his possession through 1869.

The National Museum in Warsaw’s print and drawing acquisitions after World War II included works by Zygmunt Vogel, Piotr Michałowski, Jan Matejko, Rafał Hadziewicz, Henryk Rodakowski, Józef Pankiewicz, Stanisław Masłowski, and Witold Wojtkiewicz. The year 1964 witnessed the purchase of the deposit by Leopold Wellisz, comprising a collection of prints and drawings by Feliks Stanisław Jasiński, lithographs by Leon Wyczółkowski, and the Arab Affairs body of drawings by Cyprian Kamil Norwid. In 1987, the Museum purchased some watercolours by Zygmunt Vogel from the Edward Raczyński deposit, and from Zofia Szeptycka - the “Fredroesque” watercolour series by Juliusz Kossak. Our collection was also enlarged by a gift of prints and drawings from Mała Wieś, a body of 421 architectural drawings from the late 18th and early 19th centuries (designs of the manor houses of the Mniszech and Zamojski families purchased in London in 1975 and 2005), the gift of Donatella Episcopo-Lipinsky and Ubaldo Episcopo of Rome (1990, 1992 – the print oeuvre of Sigmund Lipinsky) and, in 1996, by the gift of Hanna Jabłczyńska-Jędrzejewska (89 zinc and celluloid matrices by Feliks Jabłczyński).