SALAMAN, Michael (1911-87). A collection of letters to Michael Salaman from Charles Aitken (4 letters), Campbell Dodgson (2), Michael Holroyd (6), Eric Kennington (3), Bernard Leach (3), William Rothenstein (1), Randolph Schwabe (1), and many others.

SALAMAN, Michael [or Michel] (1911-87, British artist and teacher).  A collection of autograph and typed letters to Michael Salaman, and his wife, from various artists and writers, various dates and sizes, including letters from Charles Aitken (4 letters), Campbell Dodgson (2), P. Cross (2), Michael Holroyd (6, one incomplete), Eric Kennington (3), Bernard Leach (3), William Roberts (1), William Rothenstein (2), Randolph Schwabe (1), Rosa Waugh (1), Humbert Wolfe (8) and Jessie Wolf (1). Bernard Leach writes (in one letter): "I'd like to cross-question [Arthur] Waley & perhaps I'll muster courage to do so next time I'm up. Of course the social conditions, particularly in the position & freedom of women, were extraordinarily difficult from those obtaining under the Tokugawa regime. What I question is whether he has not made the mentality of his 10th century Japanese too much like ours by the very freedom & light-footed imaginativeness of his renderings. My experience of Eastern peoples has been that in each case the mental background of consciousness is something as distinct as the smell of Japanese paper is from ours - as evanescent - as difficult to pin down" (1929). Humbert Wolfe writes: "Do you remember telling me of your idea of a series of travel books which were to be, in fact, Week-end Books for the countries visited? I have spoken to Douglas Jerrold of Eyre & Spottiswoode, and he is really interested" (1929). The letters from Charles Aitken, the first Director of the Tate Gallery (now Tate Britain) from 1917-30, include somewhat muted responses to Salaman's requests that the artist Edna Clarke Hall should be included in the national collection. In one, he writes, "I do think most of the drawings, though interesting and often charming, were scarcely carried far enough to be suitable for a National Collection" (1926). Michael Holroyd writes: "... I am preparing a full-length biography of Augustus John. It is the wish of Mrs Dorelia [i.e. Dorothy] John, and myself, that this book should be as comprehensive and as accurate as possible, and I was wondering whether you might therefore be able to help me" (1968). Michael Salaman - usually addressed in these letters as Michel - was an influential British artist and teacher. He studied at the Slade School of Fine Art under Henry Tonks from 1928 to 1931, under Albert Rutherston at the Ruskin School of Art, Oxford, from 1930 to 1931, and at the Academie Ranson, Paris from 1933 to 1934. During the six years he lived in Paris he exhibited alongside Picasso, Braque, Bonnard and Dufy. When he returned to England he concentrated on teaching, mainly at the Camberwell and Chelsea Schools of Art between the 1940s and 1960s, where his students included Anthony Eyton, Maggi Hambling and Euan Uglow. Provenance: Sotheby's, London, 16 October 1978, lot 285.