R. B. Beckett English artist research files

This collection contains research files of English art historian R. B. Beckett, chiefly consisting of study photographs and clippings collected from the late 1940s to early 1960s documenting the works of John Constable and other English artists including William Blake, Thomas Gainsborough, Thomas Rowlandson, J. M. W. Turner, and Richard Wilson. In addition there are also images and clippings related to English portraiture, as well as sporting and comic images.

The artist research files contain study art photographs and clippings, with some occasional correspondence and notes by Beckett. Six artists (Blake, Constable, Gainsborough, Rowlandson, Turner, and Wilson) are distinguished as their own subseries, and their files typically contain study photographs, article clippings, some scattered manuscripts and correspondence, and exhibition catalogues. The largest of these are the John Constable files (Boxes 3-10), which includes seven boxes of study images organized into four groups: by county; by year; by subject; and portraits.

Other art images in the collection are arranged either in the "Artists (various)" subseries (Box 13) or in the "Portrait artists" subseries (Boxes 14-15). In some cases, there may be images of works by the same artist in both of these subseries.

The files generally retain Beckett's presumed original order, though some miscellaneous and loose images were reintegrated with similar images or included in various folders of "miscellaneous" materials. While some of the images are professional photographs acquired from museums, most of the images are clippings from British magazines such as The Connoisseur and Burlington. Most of the images are not annotated or only contain brief handwritten identifications typically of the artist, painting title, date, dimensions, etc.

Overall there are very few manuscripts by Beckett in the collection. Exceptions consist of a sketchbook from the late 1920s containing pencil sketches of landscapes by Beckett and a few documents. The correspondence is chiefly from galleries, museums, and publishers related to Beckett's research and publications. Copies of seven published articles, chiefly related to Constable, by Beckett are included in Box 1, Folder 3.

Within the collection there are also approximately 60 exhibition catalogs. Those related to Blake, Constable, Gainsborough, Rowlandson, Turner, and Wilson are filed within their subseries; approximately 15 additional miscellaneous exhibition catalogs are housed in box 16. The collection also includes ten travel maps for English areas (Box 1, Folders 5-6) and 5 printed volumes: