This collection contains research files of English art historian R. B. Beckett (1891-1970), chiefly consisting of study photographs collected from the late 1940s to early 1960s documenting the works of John Constable and other English artists.

Ronald Brymer Beckett (1891-1970) was an art historian and English administrator in India. Beckett was born in Yorkshire, England, on January 17, 1891, and studied at Lincoln College, Oxford, before joining the Indian Civil Service and serving in India until returning to England in 1917. In England, he joined the Middle Temple before returning to India in 1918, where he served as city magistrate of Amritsar before being transferred to other government positions. In 1946, Beckett retired from service in India and moved back to England where he studied English artists and published catalogues of the works of William Hogarth (1949) and Peter Lely (1951) and the edited correspondence of John Constable (London : H.M.S.O., 1962-1975), as well as Constable and the Fishers: the Record of a Friendship (1952). Beckett died on December 1, 1970.

6.5 linear feet (16 boxes)

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