The Valists

In this paper I will asking a series of questions about the little known Valists who were an 1890s group consisting of Charles Ricketts and Charles Shannon, John Gray, Lucien Pissarro, Reginald Savage , and T. Sturge Moore which took its name from the Vale in Chelsea where Ricketts, Shannon and Savage lived. Many of the papers of its members were destroyed in the aftermath of the Wilde trial. My paper asks how you write history when much of the archive has disappeared ? How do we interpret passing references in the papers of their extended circle including Michael Field, and William Rothenstein and what can we surmise from a series of portraits by Shannon and other artists? Finally I ask what is the point of this research ?