Collection Information
Size: 0.2 Linear feet
Summary: Correspondence with and/or relating to artists John Singer Sargent, Walt Kuhn, Grant Wood, George A. Curtis, Anne Marie Jauss, and others. Approximately 300 items.
The Sargent related correspondence (77 items) is between Gaston, Director of Research at Kennedy Galleries and Knoedler Gallery, and David McKibbin, art librarian at the Boston Athenaeum and authority on John Singer Sargent. The letters deal with McKibbin's catalogue raisonné on Sargent, specific works, authenticity, and the Charles M. Mount controversy regarding fake Sargent paintings. Four of the letters are from Rodney Armstrong, Director of the Athenaeum, regarding McKibbin's death and his work on Sargent.
Relating to Kuhn are 29 letters from Brenda Kuhn, daughter of Walt Kuhn, 1971-1980, primarily dealing with Gaston's articles on the vandalization of her father's "Little Nugget" club car which he designed and built in 1937 for the streamliner "City of Los Angeles" and which traveled from Chicago to Los Angeles; ca. 50 letters from George A. Curtis and several articles and catalogs about him; ca. 60 letters from Anne Marie Jauss, mostly from N.J., 1971-1989, along with photos of her work, and an obituary, 1991. Other letters include: one from Grant Wood's sister, Nan Wood Graham, referring to Grant Wood's portrait of Henry Wallace for the cover of Time magazine (1940); several from historian Thomas B. Brumbaugh; two from Wynn Chamberlain from the Edwin Hewitt Gallery; two from Alexander Archipenko, one from Vivian Nichols regarding the Virginia Steele Scott Foundation, one from Katrina Fischer, daughter of Anton Otto Fischer, and one from Karl Kup.