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Cooper (Douglas) papers
860161
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Contributing Institution:
Special Collections
Title: Douglas Cooper papers
Creator:
Bell, Clive, 1881-1964
Creator:
Léger, Fernand, 1881-1955
Creator:
Guttuso, Renato, 1911-1987
Creator:
Cooper, Douglas, 1911-1984
Creator:
Buquet, Alain
Creator:
Sutherland, Graham Vivian, 1903-1980
Creator:
Steegmuller, Francis, 1906-1994
Creator:
Shirley, Andrew, 1900-1958
Creator:
Read, Herbert, 1893-1968
Creator:
Moore, Henry, 1898-1986
Identifier/Call Number: 860161
Physical Description:
37.5 Linear Feet
(94 boxes)
Date (inclusive): 1900-1985, bulk 1933-1985
Date (bulk): 1933-1985
Abstract: This collection chronicles Douglas Cooper's long career as critic, curator, and collector, as well his wide circle of associations
within the art world. Limited to his professional life, it encompasses his curatorship of the Mayor Gallery (London), his
investigation of art stolen by Nazis, and his penchant for controversy. It includes correspondence, manuscripts, printed matter,
photographs, clippings, audiovisual materials, and a variety of other media.
Physical Location: Request access to the physical materials described in this inventory through the
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access policy .
Language of Material:
English
.
Scope and Content of Collection
The collection embraces all papers relating to Cooper's career as a critic, curator, and collector that remained with his
estate at the time of his death. The correspondence reflects Cooper's wide circle of friends and acquaintances in the art
world, his work as an art expert, and his penchant for controversy. All of Cooper's published books, catalogs, articles and
reviews are represented, with the writing process often documented from initial notes and correspondence, through various
drafts of the manuscript, to clippings of reviews. There are correspondence and clippings from Cooper's tenure at the Mayor
Gallery, as well as correspondence and reports relating to his investigation of Nazi art collections. Photographs, slides
and transparencies comprise nearly one-third of the collection. They document Cooper's art collection and the Picasso wall
at his Chateau de Castille, his research for writings and exhibitions, his work as an art authenticator, and also record the
architectural monuments he viewed during his travels.
Missing from the collection is Cooper's correspondence with Picasso (now in the Picasso Museum in Paris), the manuscript of
Road to Bordeaux (1940), and papers relating to the unfinished Gauguin catalog raisonée. The correspondence, while personal as well as professional,
is not of a highly intimate nature. There are very few personal photographs.
Media in the collection include manuscripts, photographs, slides and transparencies (glass and film), clippings, audio tapes,
Super 8 film, and small metal toys.
The collection is arranged in 9 series: Series I. Correspondence, 1939-1984; Series II. Manuscripts, 1934-1984; Series III.
Records of the Mayor Gallery, London, 1933-1938; Series IV. Papers relating to Nazi art collections, 1940-1946; Series V.
Exhibitions, 1948-1983, undated; Series VI. Photographic materials, 1900-1984, undated; Series VII. Personal and Printed
matter, 1933-1985, undated; Series VIII. Audio tapes and film, ca. 1970-1975; Series IX. Toys, undated.
Douglas Cooper was born in London in 1911 to a family that had made a fortune in Australia and acquired a baronetcy. After
briefly attending Oxford, Freiburg and the Sorbonne, he came into his inheritance, a third of which he employed to amass a
collection of early Cubist paintings (1906-1914) by Picasso, Braque, Gris and Leger. During the same decade he was associated
with the Mayor Gallery in London, serving as curator, lecturer, and essayist, presenting the European Modernists to a British
audience and developing a wide range of art world acquaintances.
During WWII, Cooper served first as an ambulance driver in pre-Vichy France, an experience recounted in
The Road to Bordeaux (with Denys Freeman, 1940), then as an intelligence officer interrogating German prisoners of war, and finally as an investigator
of Nazi art thieves and the dealers who collaborated with them. Returning to London after the war, he again took up his career
as art critic, curator and connoisseur, producing a formidable number of books, catalogs, articles and reviews, among which
were
Leger (1949),
Picasso: Les Dejeuners (1962),
The Cubist Epoch (1971),
Juan Gris: Catalogue Raisonné (with Margaret Potter, 1977), and
The Essential Cubism (with Gary Tinterow, 1983). While the focus of his work remained the Paris School of early Cubism, Cooper also wrote on Degas,
Turner, Klee, Sutherland, Guttuso, and numerous others. A personal friend of many of the artists whose work he collected or
reviewed, Cooper reserved his highest praise for Picasso, whom he commissioned to create a design for a wall at his Chateau
de Castille in Provence.
Known equally for his charm and cantankerousness, Cooper engaged in many battles with those art institutions and individuals
whom he perceived as insufficiently persuaded of the greatness of European Modernism. The most famous of these controversies
involved the Tate Gallery, which he assiduously attacked for more than twenty years. Until the end of his life, Cooper continued
to lecture and curate exhibitions throughout Europe and the U.S. He also wrote radio broadcasts and film narrations about
art history. He died in 1984, leaving most of his estate to his adopted son, William McCarty Cooper.
A portion of the research photographs was moved to the Photo Archive, Paintings Section (accession no. 86.P.2) shortly after
the collection was received in 1986. In 2013, this material was restored to accession no. 860161, the Douglas Cooper papers.
Books were transferred to the Getty Research Institute Library. A Brinsley Ford/Richard Wilson item was moved to Special Collections
accession no. 860298. Janis Gallery material was moved to Special Collections accession no. 890044**.
The Douglas Cooper Papers were acquired in 1986. Subsequently, theater programs and a miniature copy of Grimm's fairy tales
illustrated by David Hockney were moved into the collection from Special Collections accn. no. 860281. Preliminary processing
was done, and a box list was prepared. Annette Leddy completed processing the collection in 1997 and wrote this finding aid.
In 2013, when the the Cooper research photographs were reintegrated, Jan Bender wrote the inventory for the relevant subseries
and Ann Harrison made further revisions.
Acquired from William McCarty-Cooper in 1986.
Douglas Cooper papers, 1900-1985, bulk 1933-1985, The Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles, Accession no. 860161.
http://hdl.handle.net/10020/cifa860161
Open for use by qualified researchers.
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Subjects and Indexing Terms
Photographs, Original
Architecture, Modern -- 20th century
Videotapes
Art, Modern -- Collectors and collecting
National socialism and art
Art thefts -- Europe
Art -- Exhibitions
Art historians
Sunshine at midnight: memories of Picasso and Cocteau
Fernand Léger et le nouvel espace
Juan Gris: catalogue raisonné de l'oeuvre peint ...
Les déjeuners / Pablo Picasso
Essential Cubism, 1907-1920: Braque, Picasso & their friends
Cubist epoch
École de Paris
Cubism
Painting, Modern -- 20th century
Bonington
World War, 1939-1945 -- Art and the war
Post-impressionism (Art)
Photographic prints
Audiotapes
Arp, Jean, 1887-1966
Marini, Marino, 1901-1980
Kandinsky, Wassily, 1866-1944
Klee, Paul, 1879-1940
Gris, Juan, 1887-1927
Gauguin, Paul, 1848-1903
Gogh, Vincent van, 1853-1890
De Chirico, Giorgio, 1888-1978
Delacroix, Eugène, 1798-1863
Cézanne, Paul, 1839-1906
Chagall, Marc, 1887-1985
Braque, Georges, 1882-1963
Tate Gallery
Staël, Nicolas de, 1914-1955
Cooper, Douglas, 1911-1984
Picasso, Pablo, 1881-1973
Museo del Prado
Miró, Joan, 1893-1983
Mayor Gallery