The Robert B. Honeyman Jr. Collection of Early Californian and Western American Pictorial Material comprises more than 2000 items assembled by this private collector through the early 1960s. Honeyman and his agents (notably Warren Howell of John Howell Books in San Francisco) assembled the collection which was housed for years in a private museum at Honeyman's Rancho Los Cerritos near Mission San Juan Capistrano. The collection was purchased by The Bancroft Library in 1964. Honeyman's collection primarily emphasizes the pictorial interpretation of the West, but also includes a variety of printed materials, ephemera, and manuscript material. Pictorial material includes fine oil paintings, watercolors, drawings, lithographs, engravings, etchings, maps, charts, lettersheets, and other formats. All illustrate early California and the Old West, the majority dating before 1900.
The collection includes the earliest surviving drawings of any scene in California done during the visits of Alejandro Malaspina's expedition in 1791 and 1792. Other early voyages and explorations of California include Captain Vancouver's expedition in 1792 or 1794, Nikolai Rezanov's expedition in 1806, and Otto von Kotezebue's expedition in 1816.
Many well-known painters of the West are represented in the collection, as noted by Susana Bryant Dakin in a brochure produced by The Friends of The Bancroft Library in 1963 to aid in fundraising for the purchase of the collection:
Well-known painters of the West... are represented by oils and watercolors and drawings in the collection. Charles Christian Nahl may be considered the most important resident artist of the early American period in California history. Besides a sketch-book, dated 1853 and 1854, Mr. Honeyman managed to acquire five Nahl oils, including the beautiful and exciting Incident on the Chagres River. A watercolor by Charles Russell, The War Party, is small but prime quality. Alexander Edouart's Blessing of the Enrequita Mine, New Almaden, in the Year 1859 is a superb documentary of an important mining activity. There is a magnificent oil painting of Mokelumne Hill by A. D. O. Browere; and impressive scenes by the French artist E. E. Narjot de Francheville, an early arrival on the West Coast, attracted by news of gold.
On and on--the viewer becomes entranced by the brushwork and romantic concepts, no less than literal renderings of the primitive scene, by such as Albert Bierstadt, Augusto Ferran, Alfred Jacob Miller, Jules Tavernier, William B. McMurtrie, Charles Wimar, Joseph Lee, Thomas Hill, William Keith--along with others who attracted public attention for the first time in a Honeyman exhibition...
Much of the artwork is described in Joseph Armstrong Baird's Catalogue of Original Paintings, Drawings, and Watercolors in the Robert B. Honeyman, Jr. Collection (1968). Books in the collection have been cataloged by the library in the call number range F591.H72.A--Z. Manuscript materials have been cataloged and classified separately with the provenance noted and traced (under the catalog entry, Honeyman, Robert B.; Robert B. Honeyman, Jr. Collection).
(Sources: Dakin, Susana Bryant. The Honeyman Collection of Early Californian and Western American Pictorial Material : a Project of The Friends of the Bancroft Library. Berkeley, Calif. : The Bancroft Library, 1963.
Mills, Paul. "Collection of Robert B. Honeyman, Jr." In California Pictorial 1800-1900; an Exhibition of Two Parts: the Collection of Robert B. Honeyman, Jr. and Paintings by William Keith. Santa Barbara, Calif. : Santa Barbara Museum of Art, 1962.)