Letters to Crozier

Scope and Content

This class comprises letters to or concerning Robert Crozier, chiefly being letters from Crozier's contemporaries in the art world. Several letters relate to the fund set up to support the widow and children of William Bradley (1801- 1857), the Manchester portrait painter who died in poverty on 16 January 1857 after prolonged illness (CRO1/3-9). Crozier had studied under Bradley in the 1840s and appears to have played a leading role in the establishment of the fund. Subscribers included Francis Grant, William Ewart Gladstone and Sir Charles Lock Eastlake, although John Ruskin apparently declined to contribute.

There are also five letters from Frederic James Shields, the painter and book-illustrator (1/17, /21-22 & /28-29), and single letters from George Frederic Watts (1/13), William Hull (1/16), Sir Coutts Lindsay (1/18), Thomas Oldham Barlow (1/20) and (Samuel) Luke Fildes (1/27). Two letters from Sir Henry Wentworth Acland relate to the employment of Robert Crozier's son, George, at the Radcliffe Library in Oxford (1/10-11).

Arrangement

In the absence of any original order the items within this class have been arranged in chronological order.