The High's European Art collection comprises more than a thousand paintings, sculptures, and works on paper, spanning six centuries of artistic endeavor, from the 1300s through the 1900s.

In 1958, the Samuel H. Kress Foundation donated what remains the core of the High's Old Master collection of Renaissance and Baroque painting; acquisitions since then allow the Museum to represent most major European art movements. Thanks to the gifts of the Doris and Shouky Shaheen Collection and the Iris and Howard Stein Collection, the High boasts important holdings of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist paintings and nineteenth-century French sculpture. The European print collection, displayed on a rotating basis, ranges from iconic Renaissance engravings to a large cache of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec lithographs.