Scope and Content of Collection

The collection comprises manuscript correspondence and documents by over 75 painters, sculptors, architects, and printmakers, predominantly from 17th- and 18th-century France. Correspondence constitutes the bulk of the collection; additional materials include financial and legal documents such as manuscript receipts, promissory notes, discharges of debt, commission contracts for works of art, lease agreements, a royal brevet, and a partition of estate. The collection also includes signed statements by groups of artists and members of the royal academy.

French artists represented in the collection include painters and draftsmen Nicolas de Largillierre and Hubert Robert; painters Louise-Élisabeth Vigée-Lebrun and Jean-Baptiste Regnault; academician Joseph-Siffrède Duplessis; architects Marie-Joseph Peyre, Michel-Barthélemy Hazon, Jean Chalgrin, and Ange-Jacques Gabriel; sculptors Laurent Guiard, Noël Jouvenet V, and Philippe-Laurent Roland; printmakers Noël Hallé, Nicolas Ponce, and Simon Thomassin; and engravers Jean Bernard Restout and Joseph-Marie Vien the elder. The collection also includes materials by Danish engraver Johan Frederik Clemens and German printmaker Johann Gotthard von Müller.

The collection is arranged alphabetically, largely in adherence with the organization of Volkoff and Von Hohenlohe, with minor adjustments to accommodate standardized names of artists. Original manuscripts have been maintained alongside collectors' research and acquisition documents, which include annotated typescript descriptive notes for the Ver Heyden de Lancey acquisitions, twenty-first century laser printouts of electronic resource research materials assembled by Von Hohenlohe, and photographs of portraits of the artists. Collector dossier folders that comprise only modern English-language research materials were incorporated into folders containing the relevant French-language manuscripts. Von Hohenlohe's dossier numbers are detailed in descriptive notes at the component level.

Arrangement

Arranged alphabetically.