The papers of art historian E. P. Richardson measure 28.7 linear feet and date from 1814-1996, with the bulk of the materials dating from 1921-1996. Within the papers are scattered biographical materials; acquisition files for Richardson's personal art collection; professional and personal correspondence with colleagues, art historians and critics, artists, museums, galleries, and dealers; numerous writings, including manuscripts and research files for his published books, articles, and lectures; general research notebooks and files compiled by Richardson on a wide variety of art-related topics and artists; professional and committee files; as well as a smaller amount of Constance C. Richardson's papers.
Scope and Contents:
The papers of art historian E. P. Richardson measure 28.7 linear feet and date from 1814-1996, with the bulk of the materials dating from 1921-1996. Within the papers are scattered biographical materials; acquisition files for Richardson's personal art collection; professional and personal correspondence with colleagues, art historians and critics, artists, museums, galleries, and dealers; numerous writings, including manuscripts and research files for his published books, articles, and lectures; general research notebooks and files compiled by Richardson on a wide variety of art-related topics and artists; professional and committee files; as well as a smaller amount of Constance C. Richardson's papers.
Biographical materials include certificates, awards, and honorary degrees, membership information, personal and family photographs, a few sketches, and a transcript of an oral history Interview with E.P. Richardson conducted by the National Endowment for the Humanities in 1982.
There are acquisitions files for the Richardsons' personal art collection that invoices, photographs, correspondence with galleries and collectors, appraisals, price lists, and artwork examination forms.
Correspondence is with colleagues, art dealers, collectors, museums and museum curators, foreign scholars, organizations, galleries, artists, art historians and critics, publishers, editors, librarians, friends, and family. Topics regard purchasing art for various collections, consultations about art and collecting including authentications and attributions, publishing, general art history, lectures, and personal matters, among other topics. There is correspondence with the Archives of American Art, Castano Galleries, Lawrence Fleischman, James Thomas Flexner, Alfred V. Frankenstein, George Croce, Walter Heil, Earl Krentzin, Wilmarth Lewis, Russel Lynes, John Francis McDermott, Philadelphia Museum of Art, J. Hall Pleasants, Anna Rutledge, Charles Sellers, Smithsonian Institution, Regina Soria, Victor Spark, William Stevens, Robert Vose, William Woolfenden, and many others. Scattered correspondence with artists is with Isabel Bishop, Louis Bouche, William Bostick, Eve Garrison, Edward Hopper, Irene Jungwirth, Yasuo Kuniyoshi, Hughie Lee-Smith, Reginald Marsh, Gerald Mast, Georgia O'Keefe, Charles Sheeler, Walt Speck, and John Wedda, among many others. The greatest extent of correspondence is with Andrew Wyeth, Harold Cohn, and Frederick Simper. There is also personal correspondence with family and friends, and between E.P. and Constance Richardson.
E.P. Richardson's prominence as an art historian, writer, and expert on collecting is well documented through his prolific writings. Materials include drafts, notes, typescripts, and outlines for articles, exhibition catalog essays, and lectures. Also found are research files and publishing documentation for Richardson's books, including Washington Allston: A Study of the Romantic Artist in America (1948), Painting in America (1956), Charles Willson Peale and his World (1983), and American Romantic Painting (1944). There are also miscellaneous notes and four diaries. Two of the diaries comment on the social and cultural life of Detroit; the authenticity of paintings; Richardson's reflections on contemporary American painting, thoughts about museums, dealers, artists, and art historians (especially Wilhelm R. Valentiner); and travel.
Notebooks compiled by Richardson on a wide variety art-related topics cover nearly six decades. There are also numerous research files organized Richardson about individual artists and art history. And, the art collector files contain reference materials about art collectors and their collections including Lamont du Pont Copeland, Michael W. Freeman, Nelson Rockefeller, Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Allen, and the Marquis de Somerlous. There are three index card file boxes containing bibliographic data on published books and articles.
Professional and committee files document Richardson's professional and consulting work for the Art Quarterly, Detroit Institute of Arts, National Collection of Fine Arts, the National Portrait Gallery, the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, the John D. Rockefeller III collection, Winterthur Museum, the White House, and the Historical Society of Pennsylvania.
Constance C. Richardson's papers include business and professional correspondence with various institutions, most extensively with the Macbeth Gallery. In addition, there is a smaller amount of personal correspondence, photographs and slides of her artworks, printed materials, two illustrated notebooks on her work, and miscellaneous notes. Also included is Constance's artist palette.
Biographical / Historical:
Art historian, museum director, and writer E. P. (Edgar Preston) Richardson (1902-1985) served as director of the Detroit Institute of Arts (1945-1962) and Winterthur Museum (1963-1966). He was also a board member of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts from 1966-1977 and, in 1954, co-founded the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
E. P. Richardson was born in 1902 in Glens Falls, New York and died in Philadelphia in 1985. He graduated from Williams College in Massachusetts in 1925 and studied painting at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts for the three years following graduation. In 1930 he became educational secretary at the Detroit Institute of Arts, was quickly named assistant director in 1933, and served as director from 1945 to 1962. He left Detroit to take the position of director of the Winterthur Museum, where he remained until 1966.
Richardson married Constance Coleman in 1931. Born in Berlin, Germany in 1905, Constance Coleman Richardson was an award-winning and widely exhibited realist style painter of American landscapes. She gave up painting in the 1960s and died in 2002.
While at the Detroit Institute of Arts, E. P. Richardson co-founded the Archives of American Art with Lawrence Fleischman, and served as the Archives' first director. Richardson was also art advisor to John D. Rockefeller III for over ten years, editor of Art Quarterly from 1938 to 1967, and a member of various boards, including the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, the Smithsonian Arts Commission, and the National Portrait Gallery. He authored numerous books including ones on artists Washington Allston and Charles Willson Peale, and The Way of Western Art: American Romantic Painting (1939), Painting in America: The Story of Four Hundred and Fifty Years (1956), A Short History of Painting in America (1963), and American Art, an Exhibition of the Collection of Mr. and Mrs. John D. Rockefeller, 3d (1976).
Related Materials:
Related collections among the holdings of the Archives of American Art include an interview with E.P. Richardson dated February 6, 1978 conducted by Linda Downs; and several miscellaneous manuscripts that include an E.P. Richardson Letter to Rockwell Kent, June 15 1959; E.P. Richardson letters to Lawrence Arthur Fleischman, May 13, 1962 and August 22 1954; and a Yasuo Kunioshi letter to E.P. Richardson, July 25 1948.
Additional E.P. Richardson papers are found at the Detroit Institute of Arts and in the archives of the Henry Francis du Pont Winterthur Museum.
Separated Materials:
The Archives of American Art also holds material lent for microfilming (reel D46) including E.P. Richardson's research material on Jeremiah P. Hardy. These materials are housed at the Smithsonian American Art Museum Library and are not described in the collection container inventory.
Provenance:
Edith Wilkinson first donated a letter to E. P. Richardson from herself in 1957. E.P. Richardson donated papers to the Archives of American Art in 1958 and 1960 and lent materials for microfilming in 1961. Addition material was donated by Constance Richardson in 1985, and by Martha Fleischman in 2003.
Restrictions:
Use of original material requires an appointment and is limited to the Archives' Washington, D.C. Research Center. Contact References Services for more information.
Rights:
The Archives of American Art makes its archival collections available for non-commercial, educational and personal use unless restricted by copyright and/or donor restrictions, including but not limited to access and publication restrictions. AAA makes no representations concerning such rights and restrictions and it is the user's responsibility to determine whether rights or restrictions exist and to obtain any necessary permission to access, use, reproduce and publish the collections. Please refer to the Smithsonian's Terms of Use for additional information.
Biographical material; correspondence with friends and colleagues, including Charles W. Green, Marsden Hartley, Homer Eaton Keyes, John Kieran, Ruth Webb Lee, James Roosevelt, Francis Henry Taylor, Bradford Washburn and others; subject files, including one on Castano Galleries in Boston; lecture notes; writings, including typescripts and drafts for the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Fogg Museum, and the Christian Science Monitor; a typescript of an article by James Duncan Phillips; printed materials; photographs of Dooley and of the U.S. Army's recovery of art objects form the Berlin Museum in 1945; and ephemera.
Biographical / Historical:
Art critic, writer and educator; Cambridge, Mass. Was the associate editor and art critic for the Boston Transcript; wrote extensively for other publications. Headed the Division of Education at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and founded the Pewter Collectors Society.
Provenance:
Donated 1975 and 1981 by Mrs. William G. Dooley.
Restrictions:
Use of original papers requires an appointment and is limited to the Archives' Washington, D.C., Research Center. Contact Reference Services for more information.
Occupation:
Art critics -- Massachusetts -- Boston Search this
20 feet, chiefly gallery records and some personal papers of gallery owner, Giovanni (John) Castano, including correspondence, legal material, subject files, notes, writings, financial material, photographs, a scrapbook, and printed material.
Included are biographical information about Castano, business correspondence with dealers, museums, clients, collectors, artists, art historians, and others, and some personal correspondence, including a letter from Rome, 1876, from an unidentified writer to an unidentified woman containing a detailed description of a painting in the Barberini, and correspondence related to Castano's work as a scenic artist, 1924-1931. Subject files contain mainly correspondence and lists of work, and relate to Italian Renaissance exhibition, 1938, the Heeramaneck Collection of Persian and Indian Art, a Boldini exhibition, Arthur C. Goodwin, 1945-1952, and a Mancini-Sargent exhibition, 1951.
Financial material includes records of expenses and income; account books; employees' weekly wage book; records of purchases and sales of art work, including part of a bill for a painting by Diaz paid by Knoedler and Co., 1890; appraisals done for individuals, estates and institutions, including the Gorham Corporation, Harvard University murals, the Mrs. T. Morris Murray estate, furnishings of William M. Paxton's studio, ca. 1941, and paintings by Edmund Tarbell, and others; consignments; priced auction catalogs of the Henry F. Sears estate, the Mary A.H. Traiser estate, and miscellaneous price lists.
Also included are a card file on paintings; lists of paintings; inventories; client cards; address and appointment books; mailing lists; gallery journals, 1936-1927; descriptions and notes on paintings and authentications; biographies of artists; writings by and about Castano; and notes by Churchill Wyman on Philip Hale's anatomy lectures.
Photographs are of Castano, his work, artists at work, and various works of art. Original art work consists of sketches for a logo designed by Suzanne Chapman. Included in the exhibition related material is a catalog for Castano's posthumous exhibition.
Also included is a scrapbook containing announcements, clippings on the gallery and Castano, exhibition catalogs, and biographical material compiled by Castano's longtime secretary.
Among the correspondents are: Philip Beam, Walter P. Chrysler, Jr., Gibson Danes, Franz Denghasusen, Lloyd Goodrich (Whitney Museum of American Art), Isabella Grandin, Lilian W. Hale, Philip Hofer (Fogg Art Museum), Perry T. Rathbone (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston), Edgar P. Richardson (Detroit Institute of Arts), Paul J. Sachs (Fogg), and Lionello Venturi.
Biographical / Historical:
Art gallery, Boston, Mass. Founded in 1931 by Giovanni Castano, also known as John Castano. Castano attended the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, where he was an assistant to Philip Hale. He was a scenic artist for the Boston Opera Company and for the Grand Opera in Cincinnati, Ohio. During the Depression, he returned to Boston where he opened a gallery on Newbury Street specializing in European and American paintings, acted as an agent for Wildenstein and Co., and restored paintings. The gallery had numerous exhibitions of the "Boston School," including A.C. Goodwin, Winslow Homer, Philip Hale, Edmund C. Tarbell, William Paxton and others. The gallery occupied several Newbury St. locations. From 1975 until his death, Castano operated it from his home in Needham.
Other Title:
Giovanni Castano Galleries records, 1907-1983.
Provenance:
Lent for microfilming by Elvira Castano Palmerio, Castano's daughter, 1988.
Restrictions:
The Archives of American art does not own the original papers. Use is limited to the microfilm copy.
An interview of Josephine Marie Caruso Castano regarding her husband, painter and art dealer Giovanni (John) Castano, conducted by Robert Brown for the Archives of American Art.
Castano discusses her childhood and marriage to Giovanni (John) Castano; his career in Cincinnati as a scene painter for the local opera company; moving to Boston circa 1930; his career there as an art dealer, owner of Castano Galleries, and an agent for Wildenstein and Knoedler's; his work as a teacher and painting restorer; the sculptor Franz Denghausen; and passing references to various painters, museum personnel, and art dealers.
Biographical / Historical:
Josephine Marie Caruso Castano is the widow of painter and art dealer Giovanni (John) Castano.
General:
Originally recorded on 1 sound tape cassette. Reformatted in 2010 as 1 digital wav file. Duration is 41 min.
Provenance:
These interviews are part of the Archives of American Art Oral History Program, started in 1958 to document the history of the visual arts in the United States, primarily through interviews with artists, historians, dealers, critics and administrators.
Restrictions:
Transcript available on the Archives of American Art website.
Woodbury, Charles H. (Charles Herbert), 1864-1940 Search this
Extent:
2.4 Linear feet
Type:
Collection descriptions
Archival materials
Scrapbooks
Date:
1878-1959
Scope and Contents:
The papers of Charles H. Woodbury and Elizabeth Ward Perkins measure 2.4 linear feet and date from 1878-1959. Included are correspondence, writings, exhibition files, inventories, art work, photographs and printed material.
Correspondence includes circa 340 letters from Woodbury to Perkins written from Maine, Massachusetts, and various locales; circa 40 letters from Woodbury to his mother, mostly written from Holland with notes about the letters. Other letters are to Woodbury from Edward Filene, John B. Paine, and Thomas Allen, regarding the painting Mid-Ocean; a letter from Sam Houghton regarding his purchase of a watercolor; letters to Woodbury from William Merrit Post, Charles C. Curran (of the National Academy of Design), Benjamin Kimball, Malvina Hoffman, George W. Eggers (of the Art Institute of Chicago), and Leila Mechlin (of Southern Art Projects); letters to Woodbury from Arthur Wesley Dow, John C. Pierson, Hughes Mearns, Philip R.V. Carol, Ruth E. Hutchins, Charles W. Eliot, and Vernon M. Cady regarding Woodbury's manuscripts, "The Art of Seeing and Observation: Visual Training Through Drawing"; letters to Woodbury and Elizabeth Perkins from Charles J. Connick, various institutions, and the Assistant Secretary of State regarding Woodbury's art; legal correspondence to Perkins regarding Woodbury's estate taxes and disposition of paintings; and letters to Anna Perkins, daughter of Elizabeth Perkins, from Castano Galleries.
Writings consist of notes and essays by Woodbury on the technique and philosophy of drawing, painting and etching, and a paper by Woodbury and Perkins "The Modern School and Its Sources". Exhibition files include exhibition price lists, venue lists and typescripts of reviews for Woodbury's traveling exhibition with the Federation of Arts. Inventories consist of price lists and a card file (circa 900 cards) of watercolors and oil paintings by Woodbury, 1886-1942, containing title of the work, the date painted, the size, and the disposition of the work. Artwork includes 63 drawings (one dedicated to Perkins), two etchings, and two paintings by Woodbury. Photographs are of works of art by Woodbury.
Printed material includes a scrapbook of clippings relating to Woodbury and Perkins and the Woodbury Training School in Applied Observation and their other art education endeavors; a book, "Descendants of Alexander Robinson and Angelica Peale," owned by Perkins; exhibition price lists; venue lists and typescripts of reviews for Woodbury's traveling exhibition with the Federation of Arts.Photographs are of Woodbury's artwork.
Biographical / Historical:
Elizabeth Ward Perkins (1873-1959) was an artist and art patron who studied, worked and collaborated with Charles H. Woodbury.
Provenance:
Most of the papers were in Perkins' possession at the time of Woodbury's death. The card file on reel 2788 was donated in 1957 from the American Art Research Council, Whitney Museum of American Art, which had received it from Perkins' heirs. Material on reel 268 was owned jointly by Perkins' heirs, and donated in 1957 with the assistance of Giovanni Castano (Castano Galleries, Boston, Mass.), along with Charles C. Perkins' (Elizabeth Perkins' father-in-law) diary and art works, and Samuel Gray Ward's (her grandfather) art works and photographs, each described and housed separately. The scrapbook (unmicrofilmed) probably came at the same time. The remainder of the unmicrofilmed material was donated in 1989 by Perkins' daughters, Anna W. Perkins and Mary Perkins Ryan, in 2009 by John H. Mansfield, Perkins' grandson, and in 2018 by Maria Luisa F. Mansfield, Mansfield's wife.
Also found in the Archives are the Charles H. Woodbury papers.
Restrictions:
Use of original papers requires an appointment and is limited to the Archives' Washington, D.C., Research Center. Microfilmed materials must be consulted on microfilm. Contact Reference Services for more information.
