Big name, small display

Born into one of the most powerful banking families in America, Paul Mellon could well afford to indulge his Anglophile passions: from fox hunting and horse breeding to amassing the most impressive private collection of British art outside this country. This vast collection was bequeathed to Yale University in the 1960s.

Even though the Royal Academy's current exhibition, which celebrates the centenary of Mellon's birth, can only show a tiny fraction of the Yale Center's 50,000 prints and drawings, 2,000 paintings and 35,000 rare books and manuscripts, not to mention the several hundred pieces of sculpture, it's a sample that impresses the viewer with its riches.

The small display here encompasses not only the meticulously observed anatomical drawings of Stubbs (such as his Zebra, 1762/3, pictured) and Constable's faithfully rendered studies from nature, but also Blake's wild and visionary Biblical scenes and the intense and dream-like landscapes painted by Blake disciple Samuel Palmer.

Yet, though the collection stretches to the scabrous cartoons of the 18th-century satirist Thomas Rowlandson, one is also struck by its supreme conservatism - evidently the embodiment of a man who aspired to join the English country set.

Until Jan 27, Royal Academy of Arts, Burlington House, Piccadilly W1, daily 10am to 6pm (Fri to 10pm), £8, £3 to £7 concs. Tel: 020 7300 8000. www.royalacademy.org.uk Tube: Piccadilly Circus

An American's Passion For British Art: Paul Mellon's Legacy
Royal Academy Of Arts
Burlington House, Piccadilly, W1J 0BD