William Roberts Archive

The archive comprises material gathered by William Roberts and pasted or filed into his collection of sale catalogues, which date from 1892-1940. The catalogues have been catalogued separately as part of the Library collection (see URL below), the inserts removed and catalogued as part of the Archive. The relationship between library and archive material (ie. from which auction catalogue the insert was removed) is clearly visible in the relevant catalogue entries.

The inserts are mostly newspaper cuttings, images and journal articles, but they also include a small amount of correspondence. This added information most often relates to the outcome of the sales detailed in the catalogues but also provides information about the collections, collectors or individual lots of the particular sale. In some instances, Roberts also annotated the sale catalogues with names and prices. He continued to interleave relevant material into the catalogues retrospectively.

The sale catalogues - and therefore the inserts - relate both to sales at large auction houses (such as Sotheby's and Christie's), but also to more obscure regional auction houses. They are a useful resource for the study of provenance, collections and collectors at the beginning of the twentieth century until the start of the Second World War.

The inserts have been arranged according to the order of the sale catalogue from which they were removed.

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