Douglas Cooper papers, 1900-1985, bulk 1933-1985, bulk 1933-1985

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Summary

Creators:
Bell, Clive, 1881-1964, Léger, Fernand, 1881-1955, Guttuso, Renato, 1911-1987, Cooper, Douglas, 1911-1984, Buquet, Alain, Sutherland, Graham Vivian, 1903-1980, Steegmuller, Francis, 1906-1994, Shirley, Andrew, 1900-1958, Read, Herbert, 1893-1968, and Moore, Henry, 1898-1986
Abstract:
This collection chronicles Douglas Cooper's long career as critic, curator, and collector, as well his wide circle of associations within the art world. Limited to his professional life, it encompasses his curatorship of the Mayor Gallery (London), his investigation of art stolen by Nazis, and his penchant for controversy. It includes correspondence, manuscripts, printed matter, photographs, clippings, audiovisual materials, and a variety of other media.
Extent:
37.5 Linear Feet (94 boxes)
Language:
English .
Preferred citation:

Douglas Cooper papers, 1900-1985, bulk 1933-1985, The Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles, Accession no. 860161.

http://hdl.handle.net/10020/cifa860161

Background

Scope and content:

The collection embraces all papers relating to Cooper's career as a critic, curator, and collector that remained with his estate at the time of his death. The correspondence reflects Cooper's wide circle of friends and acquaintances in the art world, his work as an art expert, and his penchant for controversy. All of Cooper's published books, catalogs, articles and reviews are represented, with the writing process often documented from initial notes and correspondence, through various drafts of the manuscript, to clippings of reviews. There are correspondence and clippings from Cooper's tenure at the Mayor Gallery, as well as correspondence and reports relating to his investigation of Nazi art collections. Photographs, slides and transparencies comprise nearly one-third of the collection. They document Cooper's art collection and the Picasso wall at his Chateau de Castille, his research for writings and exhibitions, his work as an art authenticator, and also record the architectural monuments he viewed during his travels.

Missing from the collection is Cooper's correspondence with Picasso (now in the Picasso Museum in Paris), the manuscript of Road to Bordeaux (1940), and papers relating to the unfinished Gauguin catalog raisonée. The correspondence, while personal as well as professional, is not of a highly intimate nature. There are very few personal photographs.

Media in the collection include manuscripts, photographs, slides and transparencies (glass and film), clippings, audio tapes, Super 8 film, and small metal toys.

Biographical / historical:

Douglas Cooper was born in London in 1911 to a family that had made a fortune in Australia and acquired a baronetcy. After briefly attending Oxford, Freiburg and the Sorbonne, he came into his inheritance, a third of which he employed to amass a collection of early Cubist paintings (1906-1914) by Picasso, Braque, Gris and Leger. During the same decade he was associated with the Mayor Gallery in London, serving as curator, lecturer, and essayist, presenting the European Modernists to a British audience and developing a wide range of art world acquaintances.

During WWII, Cooper served first as an ambulance driver in pre-Vichy France, an experience recounted in The Road to Bordeaux (with Denys Freeman, 1940), then as an intelligence officer interrogating German prisoners of war, and finally as an investigator of Nazi art thieves and the dealers who collaborated with them. Returning to London after the war, he again took up his career as art critic, curator and connoisseur, producing a formidable number of books, catalogs, articles and reviews, among which were Leger (1949), Picasso: Les Dejeuners (1962), The Cubist Epoch (1971), Juan Gris: Catalogue Raisonné (with Margaret Potter, 1977), and The Essential Cubism (with Gary Tinterow, 1983). While the focus of his work remained the Paris School of early Cubism, Cooper also wrote on Degas, Turner, Klee, Sutherland, Guttuso, and numerous others. A personal friend of many of the artists whose work he collected or reviewed, Cooper reserved his highest praise for Picasso, whom he commissioned to create a design for a wall at his Chateau de Castille in Provence.

Known equally for his charm and cantankerousness, Cooper engaged in many battles with those art institutions and individuals whom he perceived as insufficiently persuaded of the greatness of European Modernism. The most famous of these controversies involved the Tate Gallery, which he assiduously attacked for more than twenty years. Until the end of his life, Cooper continued to lecture and curate exhibitions throughout Europe and the U.S. He also wrote radio broadcasts and film narrations about art history. He died in 1984, leaving most of his estate to his adopted son, William McCarty Cooper.

Acquisition information:
Acquired from William McCarty-Cooper in 1986.
Processing information:

The Douglas Cooper Papers were acquired in 1986. Subsequently, theater programs and a miniature copy of Grimm's fairy tales illustrated by David Hockney were moved into the collection from Special Collections accn. no. 860281. Preliminary processing was done, and a box list was prepared. Annette Leddy completed processing the collection in 1997 and wrote this finding aid. In 2013, when the the Cooper research photographs were reintegrated, Jan Bender wrote the inventory for the relevant subseries and Ann Harrison made further revisions.

Arrangement:

The collection is arranged in 9 series: Series I. Correspondence, 1939-1984; Series II. Manuscripts, 1934-1984; Series III. Records of the Mayor Gallery, London, 1933-1938; Series IV. Papers relating to Nazi art collections, 1940-1946; Series V. Exhibitions, 1948-1983, undated; Series VI. Photographic materials, 1900-1984, undated; Series VII. Personal and Printed matter, 1933-1985, undated; Series VIII. Audio tapes and film, ca. 1970-1975; Series IX. Toys, undated.

Physical location:
Request access to the physical materials described in this inventory through the catalog record for this collection. Click here for the access policy.
Rules or conventions:
archives, personal papers, and manuscripts

Access and use

Restrictions:

Open for use by qualified researchers, except for unreformatted audiovisual materials.

Terms of access:

Contact Library Reproductions and Permissions.

Preferred citation:

Douglas Cooper papers, 1900-1985, bulk 1933-1985, The Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles, Accession no. 860161.

http://hdl.handle.net/10020/cifa860161

Location of this collection:
1200 Getty Center Drive, Suite 1100
Los Angeles, CA 90049-1688, US
Contact:
(310) 440-7390
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