Records of the Royal Society of Portrait Painters, including minute books, agreements, rules, acceptances of membership, papers relating to annual dinners, press cuttings, and annual exhibiton catalogues. Please note that access to the collection is by written permission from the depositors only.

Portrait of Lilian de Lissa, first principal of Gipsy Hill Teacher Training College, by artist Gilbert Spencer. The painting was commissioned by the college as a present for Miss de Lissa and presented to her in a ceremony in October 1953. The portrait has been held by Gipsy Hill Teacher Training College prior to passing to Kingston Polytechnic and Kingston University.

Collection of photographs previously owned by Iris Murdoch. Includes images of Iris Murdoch alone, Iris Murdoch pictured with others and portraits of individuals who Iris Murdoch knew. As well as Murdoch those depicted include John Bayley, Frank Thompson and Elias Cannetti.

2 postcards from George Jacob Holyoake of Eastern Lodge, Brighton to Edwin Ashworth, Todmorden Hall, Yorkshire, West Riding. (1) On the subject of portraits, 1 Feb [1897]. (2) 'Thank you for your pleasant birthday note. I have pleasant memories of Todmorden', 16 Apr 1901.

Both letters are autograph, with signatures.

Letter from Peter Mackenzie of Glasgow to Joseph Hume, 8 Jan 1834. Returning the 'Major's portrait'. Sends Hume volumes [2 and 3] of the Reformers' Gazette.

Transcript of the manuscript history of the Princes of Wales, from the time of Edward of Caernarvon to the present sovereign of England, by George Perfect Harding, F.S.A., also a description of a series of illustrations to the manuscript history, 1828, with engravings of tombs, portraits, original drawings, and manuscript letters, 1828-51, from royal and distinguished personages.

Photograph of the Murdoch family in Ireland c 1890s. Those pictured include William Murdoch and Louise Murdoch with their children Sara, Ella and Hugh. Hugh Murdoch was Iris Murdoch's father, and William and Louise her grandparents. Photograph taken at the Abernethy Studios in Belfast.

Portraits, mostly of Members of the Geological Society of London, 1792-2011, comprising of oil paintings, portrait busts, prints and drawings and sculptures of individuals notably including:

Mary Anning; William Babington; James Scott Bowerbank; William Buckland; Thomas Henry De la Beche; Hugh Falconer; Archibald Geikie; George Bellas Greenough; Henry Thomas Huxley; Charles Lyell; John MacCulloch; Gideon Mantell; Roderick Impey Murchison; William Pengelly; John Phillips; Joseph Prestwich; Andrew Crombie Ramsay; Adam Sedgwick; William Smith; Abraham Gottlob Werner; Henry Woodward.

Also 1,042 black and white photographs of Fellows who were chiefly active between the 1850s and 1920s, including Foreign Members and Correspondents; images of groups, notably a meeting of 'The British Association at Newcastle in 1838' and 'Discussion on the Piltdown Skull', 1915; images of Presidents of the Society, 1833-2011; images of winners of medals and funds, 1947, 1980-2003; images of staff of the Geological Society, 1863-1997.

Letter from Sir Edward Henry Busk of Heath End, Checkendon, Oxfordshire to R A Rye. Asking for the name and address of a photographer to reproduce his portrait painted by [John Singer] Sargent, 'as many friends are asking me for a reproduction'.

Autograph, with signature.

Portrait photographs of Fellows of the Royal Society by the Godfrey Argent Studio.

Portrait photographs of Fellows of the Royal Society by companies of Henry Maull, namely: Maull and Polyblank; Maull, Henry and Co; Maull and Co; Maull and Fox.

A sketchbook by Stanley Spencer, c 1919-1924 with one loose sketch of Gilbert Spencer by Stanley Spencer, c 1906-1908.

The Sketchbook contains 37 pages with sketches on front and back of pages, 4 loose sheets and 2 torn pages. Most sketches are made in pencil. However, 12 sketches are finished in pencil and wash, and 1 sketch in pencil and oil.

The sketchbook spans Spencer's time spent with the Slessers in Bourne End from late 1919-1920, with Muirhead Bone and his wife at Petersfield in 1921 and his stay with Henry Lamb in Poole, Dorset in April 1923 where he produced designs for what would later become the Sandham Memorial Chapel at Burghclere. The sketchbook is significant in that it includes initial ideas for a number of post-First World War religious works, including some Tate-owned paintings, notably 'Christ Carrying the Cross', 1920, 'The Robing of Christ and the Disrobing of Christ', 1922, and 'The Resurrection, Cookham', 1924-26. It also includes a number of designs (many in pencil and wash) for Sandham Memorial Chapel at Burghclare which are amongst some of the earliest sketches that Spencer created for this commission.

The loose sketch of Spencer's brother, Gilbert Spencer, is a pre-Slade School sketch of c 1906-1908 of his magnum opus.

Letter from William Ewart Gladstone of Hawarden, North Wales to Sir Joshua Walmsley, 29 Oct 1868. Replying to his request for a portrait of Gladstone. 'I am haunted by the belief that I am under a prior engagement'.

Autograph, with signature.

Thirteen photographs of Iris Murdoch at various points of her life, dating from the 1930s until the 1970s. These photographs were collected by Peter Conradi while researching his biography Iris Murdoch: A Life (2001).

Letter from Thomas Telford of Inverness to Rev John Warren, Dean of Bangor, [Caernarfonshire], 23 Sep 1811. Concerning a possible road to pass through Bangor, and giving instructions for the surveyor.

Autograph, with signature.

The following items are filed with the letter: (a) an engraving of Thomas Telford (1832); (b) engravings of Menai Bridge, the Vale of Llangollen and Conway, by W Radclyffe (undated); (c) a list of Telford's achievements, set out as if for a memorial plaque [produced after Telford's death in 1834].

Records of the Guildhall Art Gallery, comprising memorandum on the establishment of the Guildhall Art Gallery and the appointment of a Director, 1944; article The Corporation's Picture Collection and the Guildhall Art Gallery, 1965; extracts relating to the portraits of the Fire Judges, 1670-1705, and reports on the restoration of the portraits, 1945; Chamber vouchers, orders for payment and receipts for drawing, framing, setting up, inscribing and decorating the Fire Judges portraits, 1671 and order for payment for painting the pictures of the King and the Duke of York, 1672.

The City of London's first commissions were portraits of the judges appointed to assess property claims in the wake of the Great Fire of London - the so-called 'Fire Judges'. These were followed by portraits of kings and queens and of other individuals who had rendered a service which the City of London wished to recognise.