LONDON.- The Paul Mellon Centre announced that it has been permanently allocated the Paul Oppé Library and Archive under the Acceptance in Lieu Scheme. It is one of the largest and most important additions to the Centre’s Research Collections.

The library of Adolph Paul Oppé (1878-1957), art historian and art collector, includes auction sale catalogues, printed books (including many rare titles), and annotated and manuscript versions of his own books. The archive includes Oppé’s extensive series of diaries, notebooks, correspondence, travel notes and journals, as well as Oppé family papers.

Oppé was a British art historian, critic, art collector and museum official. Educated at New College, Oxford, he taught at both the University of St Andrews and Edinburgh (1902-5); worked as a civil servant at the Board of Education (1905-38); served as the Deputy Director at the V & A (1906-7 & 1910-13); and was elected as a Fellow of the British Academy (1952).

He wrote many catalogues on English drawings in the Royal Collection at Windsor, as well as monographs on various artists, including Alexander Cozens, William Hogarth and Paul Sandby. He established the study of British drawings as a scholarly pursuit. Oppé’s collection of over 3,000 drawings (dated 1750-1850) was acquired by the Tate in 1996.

The Oppé Archive contains papers created in both a professional and personal capacity. Alongside material that reflects his work as an art historian, critic, museum official and art collector, it also includes a significant volume of correspondence with, and between, family members.

At the heart of the archive is an extensive series of diaries and notebooks which were used to record professional appointments, every day activities and private thoughts. Together the material presents a unique source of art-historical information relating to the first half of the twentieth century, that once catalogued will provide an invaluable resource for art historians and researchers.

The Oppé Library largely consists of works on fine art, especially painting and drawing. Particularly notable from the Centre’s point of view are the collections of important sale catalogues from the 18th and 19th centuries and treatises on art from the same period. There are some early printed books from the 16th and 17th centuries that represent a departure for the Centre’s Library. The material is more than the working library of an art historian of the time; it is the collection of a keen connoisseur and book collector and will augment the Centre’s library resources enormously.

Mark Hallett, Director of The Paul Mellon Centre, says “The allocation of the Oppé Archive and Library is an exciting landmark in the Centre’s history and we would like to thank everyone involved.”

The Oppé Library and Archive are substantial collections; under the terms of the allocation, none of the material will be available for consultation until it has been fully catalogued. The Paul Mellon Centre is keen to achieve this as soon as possible and over the next few months will be recruiting for two project posts: an archive cataloguer and a library cataloguer.