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.
United States -- Social conditions -- California -- San Francisco
Date:
1929-1973
Scope and Contents:
Correspondence, writings, notes, photographs, and personal calendars.
UNMICROFILMED: Correspondence; photographs; engagement calendars; printed and manuscript material; catalogues; business material.
Reel NDA 3: Two notebooks containing names and addresses of San Francisco and Bay area artists interested in being employed on the Public Works of Art Project (PWAP); payroll data; artists submitting work ideas; reports of artists; record of sketches and paintings submitted by Bay area artists, Dec. 1933-Jan. 1934; report of the Regional Committee of PWAP (Region 15)--Northern California discussing the work executed for the Project in Northern California, Nevada, Utah, and Hawaii; and miscellaneous correspondence.
Biographical / Historical:
Director of the M.H. de Young Memorial Museum, San Francisco, Calif., 1933-196 and the Region 15--Northern California, Nevada, and Utah--director of the Public Works of Art Project (PWAP).
Provenance:
Mrs. Leyland Stevens, daughter of Walter Weil, donated the papers in 1974. In 1983, 2 engagement calendars and 5 items of correspondence were found at the M.H. De Young Museum and turned over to the Archives. In 1964, Lewis Ferbrache loaned some material for microfilming on reel NDA 3; originals were returned to Lewis Ferbrache after microfilming.
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.
Occupation:
Art historians -- California -- San Francisco Search this
Museum directors -- California -- San Francisco Search this
Spreckels, Alma de Bretteville, 1881-1968 Search this
Extent:
2 Reels (ca. 500 items (on 2 microfilm reels))
Type:
Collection descriptions
Archival materials
Reels
Scrapbooks
Date:
1910-1945
Scope and Contents:
Correspondence of the museum's founder Alma de Bretteville Spreckels, with her family, artists, sellers, dealers, museum directors, and others, including Alfredo Barsanti, Lida J. Hahn, Walter Heil, Thomas Carr Howe, Louis Kronberg, Jermayne MacAgy, Lloyd LaPage Rollins, Ralph Stackpole, and others; a scrapbook, 1923-1924; an auction catalog for the Claus A. Spreckels collection; a postcard album; transcript of a speech about the Legion of Honor; 215 photographs of Spreckels, her family, friends, and works of art, the National Sculpture Society exhibition, 1929, and Rodin sculpture in the Spreckels collections; registrarial receipts, 1924-1931; and miscellany.
Biographical / Historical:
Art museum; San Francisco, California.
Provenance:
Lent for microfilming 1982 by the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco.
Restrictions:
The Archives of American art does not own the original papers. Use is limited to the microfilm copy.
California Palace of the Legion of Honor records. Owned by the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. Microfilmed by the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
REELS 1732-1733: Letters from Loie Fuller, Queen Marie of Romania, and Malvina Hoffman; correspondence with Lloyd LaPage Rollins, Walter Heil, Thomas Carr Howe, Harry Noyes Pratt, and Clifford R. Dolph; manuscripts and legal documents about the founding of the California Palace of the Legion of Honor and Spreckles' gifts of art to museums; appraisals, receipts, bills, and financial statements; photographs of Hoffman's sculpture, Queen Marie of Romania and photographs and descriptions of her collection of Romanian decorative arts; museum registration records; and clippings and printed material.
Biographical / Historical:
Art patron; San Francisco, California.
Provenance:
Donated by Mrs. Dorothy Munn, daughter of Alma de Bretteville Spreckles.
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.
Occupation:
Art patrons -- California -- San Francisco Search this
Topic:
Art patronage -- California -- San Francisco Search this
Letters, writings, business records, sketches and drawings, scrapbooks, printed material and photographs relating to Neuhaus' career and works of art.
REELS 4176-4177: Corresondence with Max Doerner, Robert Sproul, Walter Heil, Roi Partridge, and Robert Neuhaus, among others. Topics include the publication of Eugen Neuhaus' translation of Doerner's book, THE ARTIST AND HIS MATERIALS, and the donation of works of art from the Neuhaus estate. Of interest among the exhibition catalogs and announcements is an illustrated catalog of a 1907 exhibition of Western painters held at the Hotel Del Monte, California.
Also included are two articles by Neuhaus, "Masters Old and New" and "History of the Art Department, University of California"; one of the two hundred printed copies of Neuhaus' 1937 monograph on Christian Nahl; an inventory of Neuhaus' paintings; a scrapbook, 1916-1966, containing clippings, lecture and exhibition announcements, reproductions of Neuhaus' paintings, photographs, and greeting cards with printed illustrations by Neuhaus; photographs, including several portraits of Neuhaus prior to his emigration from Germany and a 1941 portrait taken by Johan Hagemeyer; 23 prints made from original nitrate negatives, presumably exposed by Neuhaus, of the 1939 Golden Gate Exposition; still lifes and landscapes, possibly used as sources or references for paintings; and numerous photographs of Neuhaus' paintings.
REEL D181: Thirty-eight letters, 1908-1942; catalogs; photographs and reproductions of his paintings; 4 sketchbooks; clippings, 1931- 1945, including many reviews of his book, HISTORY AND IDEALS OF AMERICAN ART (Stanford University Press, 1931); and scrapbooks containing clippings (1904- 1925), exhibition announcements and catalogs.
Biographical / Historical:
Educator, painter; Berkeley, Calif. Taught at the University of California, Berkeley from 1908 to 1949 where he served as the first chairman of the art department.
Provenance:
Material on reel D181 was lent for microfilming by Neuhaus' son, Robert, in 1964. Robert Neuhaus donated the material on reels 4176-4177 in 1987.
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.
Exhibition of French painting, from the fifteenth century to the present day, June 8th to July 8th, 1934, the California Palace of the Legion of Honor, San Francisco
Author:
California Palace of the Legion of Honor Search this
