Letters from Ellis Waterhouse to Harold Isherwood Kay

Many of the early letters refer to events and personalities at the National Gallery. Later letters contain information about potential lenders and the selection of works for the exhibition '17th Century Art in Europe' at the Royal Academy (1938). The correspondence also includes information about paintings, people, places, events, collectors and collections in Italy and in the UK. A number have been annotated, in pen, by Cecil Gould, with information about people referred to in the contents.

Ellis Waterhouse (1905-1985) was a friend and work colleague of Harold I Kay. They corresponded regularly for eight years from 1932 until Kay's death in 1938. During this time Ellis Waterhouse was an assistant at the National Gallery (1929 -1933) then a Librarian at the British School at Rome, (1933 -1936). In 1937 he selected and catalogued pictures for the Royal Academy exhibition '17th Century Art in Europe (1938). Waterhouse was Knighted in 1975.

The letters were arranged in chronological order and numbered in pencil by David Piper. One of the letters was removed by Cecil Gould as it was from Martin Davies to Kay (See acquisition file). Two other letters in Piper's sequence are actually enclosures and have been catalogued with the letters they originally accompanied.

Open

Much of the correspondence contains sensitive material relating to individuals, therefore access is by permission of the archivist only.

The letters from Ellis Waterhouse were separated from the rest of the HIK papers in 1988 when David Piper (then custodian) gave them to Frances Haskell (Professor of Art History, Oxford, 1967-1995). They were re-united with the remainder of the material when they returned to the Gallery.