[Terence Hodgkinson, art historian and Director of the Victoria and Albert Museum.] Two Autograph Letters Signed to renaissance art expert Giles Robertson, regarding a relief attributed to Grinling Gibbons.

See his entry in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. A year before these letters Hodgkinson had become an assistant keeper in the Department of Architecture and Sculpture at the Victoria and Albert, where his first task had been to organize the display of the Hildburgh collection of English medieval alabasters. Also in 1946 Robertson had begun his long career at Edinburgh University, having worked through the war at Bletchley Park, before joining the unit assigned to track down works of art looted by the Nazis. Both letters are in fair condition, lightly aged and worn, and each folded once for postage. Both addressed to ‘Dear Giles’ and signed ‘Terence’. ONE: 20 December 1947. 2pp, 12mo. He is enclosing Robertson’s ‘print’ and informs him that he has ‘talked about the relief to Edwards (Woodwork). He confirms that it is probably limewood & concedes that an English origin is highly probable & that an attribution to Grinling Gibbons is not to be excluded. He feels fairly certain, moreover, that the frame is contemporary & also English’. He is ‘lunching with Martin [Robertson’s brother the classical scholar G. M. Robertson, 1911-2004] after Christmas & will deliver your relief to him then’. The last paragraph regards sending a print ‘Mrs Esdaile’, who has been ill. TWO: 31 December 1947. 1p, 12mo. He ‘lunched with Martin & your father [the Cambridge professor of Greek Donald Struan Robertson, 1885-1961] - very pleasant - & delivered your relief to the former’.