A look across Europe at three series of prints by major artists published in 1816, the year of the founding of the Fitzwilliam.

The period was known as ‘The year without a summer’ due to the after-effects of the 1815 volcano eruption in Indonesia. Global cooling, volcanic ash, darkness, crop failures, food riots and spectacular sunsets influenced artists and writers of the time. A variety of responses can be seen here with Goya’s Tauromaquia, books eleven and twelve of Turner’s Liber Studiorum, and Peter Cornelius’s large-scale Illustrations to Goethe’s Faust.