Autobiographical manuscript of the Anglo-French painter Theodore Roussel’s early life from 1847 to the 1880s which cites his most famous work, The Reading Girl (Tate Britain), together with several sketches, an etching, autograph letter and a manuscript draft of the painter’s will. Roussel (Theodore, 1847-1926) was a French-born English Painter and Graphic Artist. This collection includes an autobiographical account of his own life, written circa 1920, describing his artistic beginnings and later professional life from his birth up until at the mid-1880s, with references to his picture The Reading Girl [1886] and ending with the sentence 'It is through one of those exhibitions I was speaking above, at the Dowdeswell, that in the later part of the winter of 1885 I have known Whistler'. Numerous crossings out and corrections in his hand on rectos of 10 leaves with concluding page in pencil on verso of final leaf, together with a separate one-page start of an autobiographical account from when he came to England [1878], 'forty-five years ago', this leaf browned, all quarto. Additionally an unsigned pen and ink sketch of trees, 6 x 14.5 cm, and a pen and ink sketch of a man in a kilt (?), 12 x 9.5 cm, both attributed to Roussel; plus a small thumbnail pencil study of a woman's head on a plain postcard, initialled by Roussel, 'Th R'; plus an etching of a Breton woman, 9 x 7 cm, with signed presentation inscription from W. Lee Hankey to lower margin. Also an autograph letter signed from Roussel, St. Leonard's on Sea, 11 September 1919, to Annie [his sister?], 3 pp., 4to, plus 3 small photographs of Roussel, including 2 identified as with [Agnes] Ethel, circa 1920, each 10 x 6 cm. A manuscript draft of Roussel's will from 1924 in an unidentified hand, a solicitor's letter concerning Roussel's affairs after his death addressed to A[gnes] E. McKay, an invoice from James J. Brett for a monument erected in Crowhurst Churchyard to the memory of the late Theodore Roussel, made out to Miss [Agnes Ethel] McKay, 25 May 1927, 2 receipt letters from the British Museum regarding gifts, sent to Miss [Marion] Melville and Miss Agnes Mckay.
