Artist Files

This series comprises information about artists and works of art. The material includes:

-typed and handwritten record cards (approximately A5 sized) and pages of notes with details of pictures. Information may include: artist names and dates, title, medium, size of work(s) of art, Knoedler's reference numbers, description of subject matter. These records may also include information about the provenance or pedigree of works of art, owners, buyers, and sellers, and comments made by staff.

-correspondence sent to or by Knoedler's offices, or Simpson after he left their employment. The correspondees include dealers, sellers, buyers, picture owners, museums, galleries, art historians, photographers and publishers.

-'pedigree' documentation. These records include substantial summary descriptions of research and research notes, correspondence and images. They may also include letters, certificates and written statements from art historians, such as Wilhelm von Bode (1845-1929) and Cornelis Hofstede De Groot (1863-1930), giving their expert opinions on particular works of art.

-catalogues. These were produced by other auction houses, museums and galleries, and also published by Knoedler's for their own sales and exhibitions. The catalogues may be complete, or comprise a few pages only. Any complete and unannotated publications have been added to the Paul Mellon Centre's Library.

-invoices and receipts relating to the sale and purchase of works of art

-black and white photographs produced by Knoedler's, many of which were annotated with their reference numbers. These provide a visual record of the condition of works of art during the time they were bought and sold by the company, and can be used to distinguish between items with similar titles, and where titles have changed over time. Many files contain multiple copies of the same photograph, and some files comprise only photographs with no associated paperwork. Some photographs are too large and fragile to be placed with the related physical records in this series. These are noted in the catalogue descriptions as being 'OUTSIZE' and are not available for consultation because of conservation reasons.

-images acquired from external sources. These were provided by other dealers, sellers, photographers, museums and galleries, and those carrying out research into provenance. They also include cuttings of images from published material including auction catalogues, journals, books and newspapers.

-newscuttings and extracts from various journals and newspapers relating to artists, works of art, sales and dealers

-other material. This includes lists of works of art by artists, labels removed from works of art, and publicity material relating to sales. It also includes two large hardback notebooks used by staff at the London office to record information about artists, including picture titles, during the period c1910s-1920s.

Although Knoedler's staff appear to have used files to organise their records relating to artists, very few of these and little of the original order remained when this archive was acquired. Therefore, the following was carried out during the cataloguing process:

-files have been arranged in an alphabetical sequence of artist names. The names were assigned by Knoedler's and no attempt has been made to update them according to current thinking.

-the full names of artists, and their known life span or period of activity have been given in the catalogue descriptions, as stated in the Union List of Artist Names (ULAN) and the Virtual International Authority File (VIAF)

-any loose material found elsewhere in the archive relating to artists and their works of art has been added to the relevant files

-files for individual named artists contain six or more records about their different works of art, or a substantial amount of material about one of their works of art

-miscellaneous artist files comprise information on those artists for which there are less than six records per individual

-all titles of works of art have been transcribed exactly as they were written by Knoedler's staff and are given in quotation marks

-where two or more works of art by the same artist have been listed together, this reflects how Knoedler's staff recorded them, presumably because they were bought/sold at the same time

-many artists used the same title for more than one work of art and these have been listed individually

-where possible, material within each file has been arranged alphabetically by the titles of the works of art. Where two or more works of art were recorded together, presumably because they were acquired/sold at the same time, the material has been arranged alphabetically by title of the first item given in the records

-works of art which were given no titles by Knoedler's staff are referred to as 'untitled work(s)' in the catalogue descriptions

The London, New York and Paris offices of Knoedler's assigned inventory, stock, or negative numbers to the works of art they dealt with. These unique references may comprise numbers, or a combination of numbers and letters. A large proportion of the documents in this series have these, and all have been transcribed and added to the catalogue descriptions. According to the Getty Research Institute, the following letters and numbers were used by Knoedler's offices:

-1 to 17039: Knoedler ownership, 1879 to December 1927. It is difficult to distinguish between negative and stock numbers during this period.

-A1-A9347: Knoedler ownership, 1 January 1928 to 1971

-AT: Knoedler owned jointly with Jack Tanzer

-JA: Knoedler owned jointly with one or more owners

-C: Consigned to Knoedler, up to December 1927

-CA: Consigned to Knoedler: January 1928 onwards

-F: Paris stock number

-L: London stock number

-S: artist on commission

-SCA: work on consignment from the artist

In addition to the above, the following letters have also been recorded whilst cataloguing Simpson Archive, although it is not known what they denote:

-WC

-WCA

Many works of art have more than one reference number. This may have been because Knoedler's three different offices used their own numbering systems for the same item(s); they may have stayed in Knoedler's stock for a long time; or they were bought/sold by the dealer on more than one occasion.

In addition to records with reference numbers following the above formats, this series also includes some which have substantially different ones. It has been assumed these were created and used by other dealers, photographers, museums, galleries, etc., and therefore the information has not been recorded in the catalogue descriptions.

Open for research. Readers must fill in an 'Reader Agreement Form' which outlines the reading room rules and conditions concerning privacy and Data Protection

A large proportion of the material in this series was created by staff of M. Knoedler & Co.'s London office from 1914-1970s. As Librarian, Letitia Simpson was responsible for managing information about artists and sales, and corresponding with dealers, buyers and sellers. Frank Simpson took over Letitia's position, following her retirement from full time employment in 1958, and he appears to have performed the same duties. He continued to add to these records after he left Knoedler's employment in 1971.