Charles Lang Freer
Museum founder Charles Lang Freer was an American industrialist well known as a collector of Asian art. Among his personal papers are correspondence, diaries, art inventories, press clippings, purchase records, architectural drawings, and photographs relating to his life, travels, and art collecting.
Freer’s Correspondence includes letters with friends, artists, dealers, collectors, museums, and public figures. Inventories and purchase vouchers describe his acquisitions of American, European, and Asian art and provide provenance information, prices, and scholarly assessments. Other documents relate to Freer’s gift and bequest to the Smithsonian Institution.
Charles Lang Freer Papers in NMAA Archives
Charles Lang Freer’s life in photographs
- Photographic portraits of Freer by Edward Steichen, circa 1916
- Photographic portraits of Freer by Alvin Lang Coburn, 1909
- Freer in the Catskills with Frederick S. Church, 1889
- Freer in Japan, 1895–1911
- Freer at his villa on Capri
- Freer in Egypt, 1907
- Freer’s house in Detroit
- Freer memorial ceremonies in Kyoto, 1920–1930
- Freer’s associates: Photographic portraits of artists, collectors, and friends
Travel: Photographs, documents, and letters from Freer’s extensive travels in Europe and Asia, 1890s–1911
- Letters from abroad to Freer’s business partner Frank Hecker, 1894–1911
- Letters to Joseph Stephens Warring, Freer’s house manager, 1902–1909
- Letters to Freer’s friend Cameron Currie, 1901–1919
- Photographs acquired in India, 1895
- Photographs acquired in Sri Lanka, 1907
- Photographic album of ruins of Central Java, acquired in 1907
- Photographs of Japan, undated
- Photographs acquired in Egypt, circa 1907–1909
- Photographs of Aleppo and Resafa, Syria, likely acquired in 1908
- Photographs taken in Henan Province and Hangzhou by hired photographers, 1910–1911
- Freer’s own photographs taken at Longmen in Henan Province, 1910
- Freer’s travel journal in Henan, 1910
Art collections
- Purchase records: Vouchers and invoices relating to Freer’s art acquisitions
- Inventories: Portions of Freer’s art collections inventoried from 1905 until their transfer to Washington, DC, in the 1920s
- Exhibition loans
Whistlerania: Records and ephemera relating to Freer’s friendship with and patronage of the American painter James McNeill Whistler (1834–1903)
- Whistler’s letters to Freer, 1893–1903
- Portraits of Whistler
- James McNeill Whistler Memorial Exhibition at the Copley Society, Boston, 1904
- Photographs of the Peacock Room at 49 Prince’s Gate, London, 1892
- Photographs of the Peacock Room taken by Obach & Co., 1904
- Photographs of the Peacock Room in Charles Lang Freer’s house in Detroit, 1908