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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:

Further information:

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

Alternative formats:

Published microfilm: John Ruskin, the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, and Arts and Crafts Movement: the Ruskin, Holman Hunt, Fairfax Murray, Spielmann and Related Collections from the John Rylands University Library, Manchester (Woodbridge: Research Publications, 1990).

Location:


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