Digitisation of the Witt Photographic Collection Commences
A significant initiative to digitise the Witt Photographic Collection is now in progress. The entire collection will be relocated from Somerset House in mid-October 2023, with the digitisation project set to be completed by Summer 2025. Picturae BV of the Netherlands has been contracted for this work.
Professor Mark Hallett, Director of the Courtauld, said: "This monumental project not only preserves our rich artistic heritage but makes it widely accessible. It's an exciting intersection of technology and art history that ensures the Witt Photographic Collection will continue to serve scholars and the public for generations to come".
The Witt is an extensive collection, boasting over 2.1 million photographs, reproductions, and cuttings of paintings, drawings, and engravings of Western Art from circa 1200 to 2009. The collection features a comprehensive range of artists, including not only the well-known but also those less frequently spotlighted. It stands as one of the largest collections of its kind, comparable to the National Gallery of Art in Washington and the RKD in The Hague.
Tom Bilson, Head of Digital Media, states: "The Witt has consistently been a pioneer in digital projects within the humanities. The vision to make this rich resource available online has never wavered. It serves not just the art history and trade communities, but also supports research in areas such as topography, costume, genealogy, and natural history".
Established in the 1890s by Sir Robert Witt during his undergraduate studies at Oxford, the collection has a fascinating history. A comprehensive survey in 2013 showed that the Witt comprises 2,151,862 images in 102,995 folders, housed in 19,139 boxes. Its collection occupies nearly 1.4 km of shelf space and includes works from 26 different national "schools" of art.
In a venture generously backed by a private benefactor, over half of the British School has already been digitised—a selection of more than 260,000 mounted images. This work, also conducted by Picturae, will be made available on our new photographic collections website as part of the current project.
Picturae, founded in 1997 by sculptor and photographer Onno Zaman, has a robust portfolio that includes collaborations with institutions including the Amsterdam City Archives, Naturalis, the Van Gogh Museum, and the Smithsonian Institute.
The Courtauld previously worked with Picturae on a 2016 pilot project and they also supply the collections management and web publishing system for the Courtauld's photographic collections.
Please direct any questions about the project to Tom Bilson, Head of Digital Media This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..
Project Timetable
- Relocation from Somerset House: w/c 16 October and 23 October 2023
- Digitisation and Publication:
- British School by w/c 28 July 2024
- French School by w/c 2 September 2024
- Netherlandish School by w/c 11 November 2024
- Italian School by w/c 10 February 2025
- German and American Schools by w/c 11 March 2025
- Remaining Schools by w/c 15 April 2025
Overview
The Witt Library is a collection of 2.2 million photographs, reproductions and cuttings of paintings, drawings and engravings of Western Art. It is arranged by national schools, and then alphabetically by artist name.
Primary visual content: Reproductions of paintings.
Primary medium: Printed images, mounted onto paper mounts.
Origin: Mostly saleroom catalogues, some books, newspapers, periodicals, original photographs (rarely), and original prints (very rarely).
Estimated size of collection: 2,151,862 images in 102,995 folders in 19,139 boxes.
History
The Witt Library is a large collection of photographs, reproductions and cuttings of paintings, drawings and engravings of Western Art from c1200. All major artists are represented in depth and one of the strengths of the library is its coverage of lesser-known artists, unparalleled elsewhere. The Witt stopped accessioning new material in 2009.
The Library was founded in the 1890s by Sir Robert Witt (1872-1952) whilst an undergraduate at Oxford reading History and specialising in the Italian Renaissance. It was there he met his future wife Mary, who also collected photographs of works of art: friends described their marriage in 1899 in terms of the union of two photographic collections as much as two people. Initially, the library had a staff of four volunteers who worked under Mary’s supervision, and the first catalogue was published privately in 1920, followed by a supplement in 1925. At one stage the Witt Library was destined for the National Gallery but, at some time in the 1930s, it was offered to The Courtauld. Witt made a deed of gift in 1944, and on his death in 1952 the library moved from his home at 32 Portman Square to 19 Portman Square, next door to the Courtauld at number 20.
In the introduction to his Catalogue of Painters and Draughtsmen represented in the Library of Reproductions of Pictures and Drawings formed by Robert and Mary Witt (1920) he wrote about the aims of the library:
What has been attempted, therefore, is to form, after the analogy of the great Oxford Dictionary of the English Language, a kind of Murray’s dictionary of Pictures and Drawings, by concentrating and bringing together reproductions of, as nearly as may be, the whole body of European painting and drawing, and arranging it as a Dictionary in the manner most convenient for easy reference. As a Dictionary it has, accordingly, to include not only what is most interesting and important, and not only the work of the great, but also that of the little Masters, many of them of quite secondary consideration, yet playing some part in their time, and as such contributing to the general history of the painter’s craft.
The Witt Checklist was published in 1978 under the encouragement of Robert’s son John, followed in 1995 by a second edition.
Collection structure
The Witt is divided by Schools (British, French, German, Russian, Italian, Scandinavian, etc) and then alphabetically by artist. Artists whose work is well-covered by the Witt often occupy a number of consecutive boxes subdivided by medium or subject matter, whereas less prolific artists are contained within the A to Z flow of each school. Each box is further subdivided by named cardboard folders, which distinguish subjects, iconographic details or individual artists.
The basic units of the Witt Library are the cardboard mounts onto which images are affixed with water-based adhesive. Captions are either handwritten or typed onto the mounts or clipped from the same printed publication that supplied the image (usually in the case of images taken from auction catalogues). A small number of mounts have hand-written annotations which form a significant source of anecdotal documentation.
Digital initiatives
In 2017 the Courtauld Institute of Art began digitising its Witt and Conway photographic collections. Through using two entirely different methods, one outsourced to a commercial contractor, the other in-house engaging volunteers, we have been able to gain a clear understanding of the economic, practical and social benefits of both approaches as well as making excellent progress. Tom Bilson, Head of the Digital Media Department, leads both projects.
To sign up as a volunteer please head to https://timecounts.org/courtauldvolunteers. For information about the photographic collections don't hesitate to get in touch with us at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. For any copyright queries contact This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..