Wilfrid Jasper Walter Blunt (1901–1987) correspondence

Collection — Box: 1

Identifier: HIBDARC-0392

Staff Only

Content Description

The collection includes:

Letters and postcards exchanged between Blunt and George H.M. Lawrence (1910–1978), Rachel Hunt (1882–1963), John Brindle (1911–1991), J.S.L. Gilmour (1906–1986), J.S. Maas (1928–1997), Katherine MacLean (?), Leonard Duke (1890–1971), Ian Rogerson (?), Edward "Teddy" Croft-Murray (1907–1980), Henry R. Broughton (1900–1973), John C. Warner (1897–1989), Richard Louis Ormond (1939– ), Jean Chirichigno (?), H. Guyford Stever (1916–2010), Phyllis M. Stone (?), the Vatican Apostolic Library, Daniels (?), Richard Jeffries (1945– ), James J. White (1941–2011), and Robert W. Kiger (1940– ).

Some correspondence between Lawrence and J.A. Chaldecott (1916–1998), and letters between White and Jeffries discussing Blunt's estate.

Multiple typed copies and drafts of the memo "Some notes on the Hunt Botanical Library Collections of drawings, prints, and paintings", one copy with handwritten notes, dated 27 November 1962 and February 1963.

An undated typed draft of the essay titled "The Illustrators of Sertum Anglicum", which was published in Sertum Anglicum, 1788: Facsimile with Critical Studies and a Translation (Pittsburgh: Hunt Botanical Library, 1963; HI call no. DQ2 L688A 963).

An unaddressed letter titled "Forgive us our Christmases", dated December 1984, with handwritten notes.

A book jacket from a copy of Wildfred Blunt's second autobiography, Slow on the Feather: Further Autobiography, 1938-1959 (Salisbury: Michael Russell, 1986; HI call no. LB B659S) with a letter addressed to White written on it.

Various receipts, notices, invoices, and loose notes.

Dates

Creation: 1959–1987, n.d.

Biographical / Historical

Wilfrid Jasper Walter Blunt (1901–1987) was a writer and art historian with an interest in botanical art and illustrations. After his retirement from teaching art at Eton College in 1952, he became the curator of the Watts Gallery in Compton, Surrey, England, a position he kept until 1983. Blunt had been a member of the Hunt Institute's advisory committee from 1964 until his death and the Institute's sixth international exhibition of botanical art in 1988 was dedicated to him. Concerning his personal life, he wrote openly about the experience of being gay in early and mid-20th century Britain in his memoirs, Married to a Single Life: An Autobiography, 1901–1938 (Wilton, Salisbury: Michael Russell, 1983; HI call no. LB B659) and Slow on the Feather: Further Autobiography, 1938–1959 (Salisbury: Michael Russell, 1986; HI call no. LB B659S).

Also, he wrote or co-wrote a large number of academic and popular books about European and North African history, art, and his travels and life. These include The Art of Botanical Illustration (London: Collins, 1950; HI call no. GH30 B659A); (Dream King: Ludwig II of Bavaria (New York: Viking Press, 1970); The Compleat Naturalist: A Life of Linnaeus (London: Collins, 1971); Hunt call no. LB L758 B659C) with W.T. Stearn; Captain Cook's Florilegium (London: Lion and Unicorn Press, 1973; HI call no. DQ2 C254) with Stearn; The Illustrated Herbal (London: Frances Lincoln, 1979; Hunt call no. CB1 B659I) with Sandra Raphael; and The Australian Flower Paintings of Ferdinand Bauer (London: Basilisk Press, 1976; Hunt call no. DQ2 B3441A), also with Stearn. In 1950, for The Art of Botanical Illustration, he was rewarded the Royal Horticultural Society's Veitch Memorial Medal.