Three Autograph Letters Signed (all 'A. L. Baldry') to C. R. Grundy, editor of the Connoisseur, on the subject of the Royal Academy.

Author: 
Alfred Lys Baldry (1858-1939), painter and art critic (Globe, Studio), author of a work on the Wallace Collection [Cecil Reginald Grundy (1870-1944), editor of the Connoisseur; the Royal Academy]
Publication details: 
5, 10 and 27 May 1921. All three on letterhead of Wolmer Road, Marlow Common, Marlow, Bucks.
£125.00
SKU: 9272

All three letters 12mo: the first of three pages, and the last two one page apiece. Texts clear and complete. Good, on lightly-aged paper. Letter One: Sir Henry Vansittart Neale will be pleased to allow Grundy 'a look at his pictures' at Bisham Abbey. Gives directions. Discusses Grundy's letter in the Daily Express, complaining about the 'crowding out' of pictures at the Royal Academy. He considers it 'no new thing: there was a very violent outcry of the same kind some forty years ago and about that time several exhibitions were organised of pictures which had been accepted and not hung [...] My quarrel with the present Academy show is not so much that it is too much cut down as that it is very badly selected [...]'. Letter Two: He is pleased that the Bisham Abbey visit has been 'fixed up', and would like 'to have a talk with you on the Academy question'. Letter Three: Explaining why the statement 'from 1768 to 1805 the Royal Academy was the sole exhibiting society of British artists' is 'all wrong'. Concludes: 'So apparently the only period during which the Academy was the sold exhibiting society was between 1791 and 1805, when the R. W. S. began'.