The Getty Museum's collection of drawings was begun in 1981 with the purchase of a Rembrandt nude and has since become an important repository of European works from the fifteenth through the nineteenth century. As in the first volume devoted to the collection (published in 1988 in English and Italian editions), the text is here organized first by national school, then alphabetically by artist, with individual works arranged chronologically. For each drawing, the authors provide a discussion of the work's style, dating, iconography, and relationship to other works, as well as provenance and a complete bibliography.

The J. Paul Getty Museum Journal has been published annually since 1974. It contains scholarly articles and shorter notes pertaining to objects in the Museum’s seven curatorial departments: Antiquities, Manuscripts, Paintings, Drawings, Decorative Arts, Sculpture and Works of Art, and Photographs. The Journal includes an illustrated checklist of the Museum’s acquisitions for the precious year, a staff listing, and a statement by the Museum’s director outlining the year’s most important activities. Volume 20 of the J. Paul Getty Museum Journal contains an index to volumes 1 to 20 and includes articles by John Walsh, Carl Brandon Strehlke, Barbara Bohen, Kelly Pask, Suzanne Lewis, Elizabeth Pilliod, Anne Ratzki-Kraatz, Sharon K. Shore, Linda A. Strauss, Brian Considine, Arie Wallert, Richard Rand, And Jacky De Veer-Langezaal.