May 04, 2017 - Sale 2446

Sale 2446 - Lot 326

Price Realized: $ 4,680
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 1,000 - $ 2,000
"JUST AND GENEROUS APPRECIATION OF MY FATHER'S GENIUS" COLLINS, WILKIE. Autograph Letter Signed, "W.WilkieCollins," to S.C. Hall, acknowledging condolences [his landscape painter father, William Collins, died one month previously], sending a brief biography of his father [not present], explaining that he is reviewing his father's papers and intends to write a memoir. 3 pages, 8vo, written on two separate sheets, the first page on mourning stationery; remnants of prior mounting at corners of terminal page, folds. (MRS) [London], 18 March 1847
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". . . The enclosed page of the Literary Gazette of July 27th contains a notice of my father's life written by me, which is in substance and almost in form, identical with the M.S. I transmitted to you some time since. . . .
"I have begun the examination of my father's papers with the ultimate view, if I can find materials enough, of writing a Memoir of him to comprise possibly anecdotes of his contemporaries and some investigation into the state of Art in his time. . . . Fragments of letters and Journals I have found--but the links to connect them and render them comprehensible--even to me--are still scattered among his voluminous collections of papers . . . .
"What I have told you, then, is derived from what I have heard from my father's own lips, from my mother's recollections, and from the communications of old friends. . . .
"I hope (and think) that you will gain . . . information enough to aid you sufficiently in the Biographical part of your Memoir. For the Critical part, your knowledge of Art and your just and generous appreciation of my father's genius, leave me no . . . doubt whatever. . . ."