Visits to collections, houses, public galleries, sale-rooms etc. in the UK

The first group of twenty four journals, which date from 1945-2006, contain Millar's notes on his visits to public and private collections and exhibitions in the UK. He also used them to record visits to sale rooms; between 1984-1995, this information was recorded in a separate journal titled 'S'.

The journals in this series are titled with Roman numerals, I-XXIII, with the additional journal titled 'S'.

The information is generally organised by portrait, with the name of the work and the artist listed and underlined on the left hand side of the page, followed by Millar's impression and views on the work. On many occasions, the information for each visit is organised by location, so the entries themselves feel like a tour of the particular house or collection at the time the pictures were viewed.

In addition to a written account, Millar's notes sometimes includes a visual representation of what he saw: entries occasionally include sketches of works of art and their decorative surroundings. The journals are also frequently interleaved with additional research notes, correspondence, published information, postcards and so on. These have been catalogued individually with each journal, and removed from the journal but retained within the same file.

Millar visited some houses and collections multiple times over the years and made updates to previous entries, for example when pieces were cleaned, or later sold at auction. In these cases several dates are listed next to an entry.

With auction sales the assumption is that the sales took place at London sales rooms, unless specified otherwise. Millar sometimes made note of specific themes of the sale, e.g. 'miniatures', or the vendor's name; such details have been included here where present.

Millar often but not always recorded a location by its town/city and county; for consistency, in this catalogue the county is always recorded. Where a word is unclear or unknown it is followed by (?).

Selected pages from these journals have been digitised. To view the images, see the catalogue records for ONM/1/2/1, ONM/1/2/1/1, ONM/1/2/2, ONM/1/2/4, ONM/1/2/5, ONM/1/2/8, ONM/1/2/9, ONM/1/2/13, ONM/1/2/14, ONM/1/2/20, ONM/1/2/23 and ONM/1/2/24.

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