The Clarence H. White Collection
Clarence H. White, Drops of Rain, 1902. Princeton University Art Museum. The Clarence H. White Collection, assembled and organized by Professor Clarence H. White Jr., and given in memory of Lewis F. White, Dr. Maynard P. White Sr., and Clarence H. White Jr., the sons of Clarence H. White Sr. and Jane Felix White
The Clarence H. White Collection exists thanks to Princeton professor and former Museum Director Peter C. Bunnell’s relationship with Clarence H. White Jr., with whom Bunnell had studied during graduate school at Ohio University. This early encounter convinced Bunnell that a better understanding of pictorialism was required, and he arranged for the donation of the large collection in Clarence Jr.’s possession prior to Clarence Jr.’s unexpected death in 1978.
One of the cornerstones of the Museum’s collections and complementing the White materials housed at the Library of Congress, the Clarence H. White Collection includes 1,192 finished prints and approximately two thousand negatives, lantern slides, and autochromes by Clarence H. White, as well as 3,808 photographs by White School students and nearly five hundred works by other leading artists, including Paul L. Anderson, William B. Dyer, Gertrude Käsebier, and Robert Redfield. The Collection also includes business records, teaching notes, exhibition catalogues, student catalogues, and publications that were part of the holdings of the Clarence H. White School of Photography from 1914 through 1942.
