Letters to John Smith, art dealer

Letters to John Smith [art dealer] of 'Mister Smith and Son', London, from various people including his son William. Letters relate to business and a legal dispute relating to the sale of a picture which the purchaser believed was from the collection of Sir Joshua Reynolds but was thought to be a copy.

John Smith (1781-1855) was an art dealer based in London. For around seventy years John Smith's firm acted as a leading London dealer. His customers included the Prince Regent (later George IV), the Duke of Wellington, Lords Bute, Lansdowne and Northwick, Sir Robert Peel, Sir Charles Bagot, Ralph Bernal and William Beckford, as well as members of the Baring, Hope and Rothschild banking families, and the firm dealt in works by such artists as Rembrandt, Vermeer and Rubens. Internal evidence indicates that Smith's home address was Turnham Green.

Sources: letters to John Smith, art dealer; Dutch and Flemish Art in Museums Worldwide website accessed 27 November 2014 from: http://www.codart.nl/news/953/

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Papers arranged and described by Margaret Roper, November 2014, in compliance with General International Standard Archival Description (ISAD(G), second edition, 2000; and in-house cataloguing guidelines.

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Found in Barber Fine Art Library, Apr 1998. The original provenance of this deposit is unknown

National Art Library, Victoria and Albert Museum, Archon Code: 72 (Letters of John Smith, his sons and their customers; Smith firm's business book)