| Description | This collection comprises records covering all aspects of the work of a commercial art gallery, including sales, purchases and exhibitions. Includes eight stock books, a purchase ledger, purchases daybooks, ten files relating to purchases, 4 sales ledgers, sales daybook, five files relating to sales, one record books, two sets of index cards, 178 correspondence files, 227 pieces of exhibition ephemera (catalogues, private view cards and publicity cards), 31 photograph albums, five loose photographs, five files relating to 'Editions d'art Jacques O'Hana', two published volumes, two press cutting books and a folder of 42 loose press cuttings. |
| Administrative History | For over 20 years before his death in 1974 Jacques O'Hana ran the O'Hana Gallery at 13 Carlos Place, London. The Gallery opened in 1952, using stock from a previous business, and closed in March 1975. Although he dealt mainly in paintings and sculptures by Impressionist and Post-Impressionist artists, like Bonnard, Braque, Degas, Dufy, Renoir and Pissarro, he also exhibited work by a number of contemporary artists. He promoted young and, at the time, unknown artists like Paul Maze, Oliver Messel, Jo Jones, Jane Lane, William Hallé, Zsuzsi Roboz and Carlo Carva as well as older contemporary painters and sculptors such as Georg Ehrlich, Mané-Katz, Albert Reuss and Victor Pasmore.
Jaques O'Hana particularly encouraged Jewish, Spanish and South American artists, such as Abel Vallmitjana, Juan Vila Casas, Ramon Llovet, and many of these held their first exhibitions at his Gallery.
O'Hana acted as London agent for Mané-Katz whose work he collected personally. In 1970 he published a volume of complete works by this artist, followed by a second volume in 1972. |
| Acquisition Source | The records were held by the creator at the O'Hana Gallery until his death in August 1974. In 1974 custody passed to the creator's widow, Eugenie O'Hana. In 1978 she donated to Tate Archive, through the O'Hana Gallery's chartered accountant McGillivray & Co, the correspondence files, catalogues and exhibition ephemera, sales and purchase ledgers and day books. On her death in 1997 the remaining records - stock books including the final probate valuation, artists' record books, index cards, photograph albums, a small quantity of additional catalogues and material relating to the publications of Editions d'art Jacques O'Hana were presented to Tate Archive by her executor's solicitor, Eversheds. |
| Custodial History | Between 1991 and 1993 some of these records (the correspondence files England 1959-61 and the exhibition catalogues) were consulted by a man who faced criminal charges for producing false provenance for forged works of art. As far as is known he was given photocopies of documents which he then altered and re-copied. He then planned to re-introduce these new copies back into the archives where he hoped they could be used to verify forged paintings. It is impossible to say whether this archive has been contaminated in this way. The correspondence and catalogues seem to be genuine and the catalogues have been checked against other copies in other repositories and archive collections wherever possible, but researchers should bear in mind the possibility that this archive has been tampered with in this way. |