Oliver Millar's Journals

Journals and indexes from the Oliver Millar Archive

What are the journals?

Throughout his career and in particular whilst in his role as Surveyor of the Queen’s Pictures, Oliver Millar had privileged access to public and private collections in the UK and abroad. In order to record what he saw during these visits, he maintained a series of journals. Select pages can be viewed in the catalogue.

The Paul Mellon Centre takes its responsibility as a custodian of personal information very seriously and - as the journals contain information about collections in private hands - readers wishing to consult these items need to visit the Centre in person. They will be required to complete and sign a Reader Registration form which addresses the relevant data protection considerations.

The journals featuring visits to collections can be divided into two groups.

Group 1: Visits in the UK

The first group of twenty four journals, which date from 1945-2006, contain Millar’s notes on his visits to public and private collections and exhibitions in the UK. He also used them to record visits to sale rooms throughout, as well as in a separate journal, titled 'S', kept between 1984-1995. The journals in this series are titled with Roman numerals, I-XXIII, with the additional journal titled ‘S’.

View corresponding records in our Archive Catalogue.

Group 2: Visits Abroad

The second group of twenty two journals, which date from 1948–2002, contain Millar’s notes on his visits abroad. These journals are titled by the name of the country, with Roman numerals to indicate where more than one has been completed, for example, Spain I & Spain II.

View corresponding records in our Archive Catalogue.

What kind of information can I find in the journals?

Initially both groups of journals were used primarily to record information about portraits of the Stuart period where no catalogue was otherwise available, but this remit seems to have been relaxed in later years to include notes on collections, exhibitions and sales where information was already in the public domain. Sometimes Millar’s notes are extensive, running to many pages for a single visit. In other instances they are relatively brief. The information is generally organised by portrait, with the name of the work and the artist listed and underlined on the left hand side of the page, followed by Millar’s impression and views on the work. On many occasions, the information for each visit is organised by location, so the entries themselves feel like a tour of the particular house or collection at the time the pictures were viewed.

In addition to a written account, Millar’s notes sometimes includes a visual representation of what he saw: entries occasionally include sketches of works of art and their decorative surroundings. The journals are also frequently interleaved with additional research notes, correspondence, published information, postcards and so on. These have been catalogued alongside each journal and such material is kept together in the same file.

The indexes

In order to render the information in the journals readily accessible Millar maintained two indexes:

The first is an Index to Journals of Collections, etc. This index covers the twenty three journals recording visits in the UK. Please note, this does not include entries for the sale rooms (e.g. Sotheby’s, Christie's etc.) or foreign collections – information about such visits was only indexed by artist.

The second is an Index of Artists' Names. This index covers all forty six notebooks recording visits to UK collections and salerooms, as well as visits abroad.

Please note, the index does not include an entry for Van Dyck. This is because Millar tended to record information about works by this artist in a series of seven additional journals. View corresponding records for the Van Dyck journals in our Archive Catalogue.