Charles Fairfax Murray Papers

Date range: 1849-1919

Medium: Manuscript

Letters and papers of Charles Fairfax Murray (1849-1919), Pre-Raphaelite painter and art collector.

Fairfax Murray worked as a copyist for John Ruskin and was assistant to Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Edward Burne-Jones. He later worked as a buying agent for the National Gallery and a consultant for Messrs Agnew, but is best known as a collector of art.

The collection numbers over 1,500 items. There are important groupings of material relating to Sir Edward Burne-Jones, including:

• Letters from his wife Georgiana and photographs of the Burne-Jones and Morris children;
• Letters and photographs relating to Charles Augustus Howell, who was for many years Ruskin's secretary and later close companion of Rossetti, Whistler and Swinburne;
• Letters and papers of the sculptors and brothers William, Henry and Charles Behnes;

In addition there are over 700 letters to Fairfax Murray from a wide range of correspondents and 200 letters exchanged between other correspondents. These include many of the leading figures of the contemporary art world, such as:

• Sir Charles Lock Eastlake;
• George Cruikshank;
• Myles Birket Foster;
• William Holman Hunt;
• Frederic Lord Leighton;
• William Morris;
• Dante Gabriel Rossetti;
• John Ruskin;
• Frederick Sandys.

See also:

• John Ruskin Papers
• Holman Hunt Papers
• Spielmann Collection

Further information:

• Catalogue available online via ELGAR.
• Recorded in published handlist of English Manuscripts (English MSS 1278-1283).

Location:

• The John Rylands Library, Deansgate  [Map]
• Find out how to use the reading rooms in the John Rylands Research Institute and Library