Letter collection

• Reference:GB 1716 RSA1/5/3

• Scope and Content

  Arranged chronologically, the collection is very good from 1826 to c.1894. The material includes a number of different tranches; including notification by artists of private sales of works included in the Annual Exhibition, applications for membership of the Academy’s Life School, Reports of the Visitors to the Life School, Reports by the Committee of Inspection of the Academy’s property, job applications, and legal papers such as that dealing with the liquidation of the Edinburgh Heritable Bond in 1883 which collapsed owing significant debts, including £1000 to the Academy. Importantly the collection also contains miscellaneous additional corres/copy corres which is of non-Academy but a more personal nature concerning the Academy’s second, and longest-serving Secretary D O Hill RSA including much of importance re early photography and specific contacts, and his elder brother Alexander Hill - gifted by Mrs Amelia Hill following death of her husband D O Hill in 1870. Note, cataloguing to item level is ongoing. In some cases, individual letters have been removed and added to artist's files.

• Other Finding Aids

  There is a bound handwritten list compiled by the Academy’s first officer Librarian, Meta Viles, a bound typed Index of Letters and Archives