General Correspondence
name: label: Collection Creator
content: Volk, Leonard Wells, 1828-1895
label: Collection Creator
content: Volk, Douglas , 1856-1935
setName: label: See more items in
content: Douglas Volk and Leonard Wells Volk papers
label: See more items in
content: Douglas Volk and Leonard Wells Volk papers / Series 1: Douglas Volk Papers / 1.2: Correspondence
unitdate: label: Date
content: circa 1870-1952
dataSource: label: Archival Repository
content: Archives of American Art
identifier: label: Identifier
content: AAA.volkleon, Subseries 1.2.2
objectType: label: Type
content: Archival materials
arrangement: label: Arrangement
content: Records are arranged alphabetically by correspondent.
altformavail: label: Existence and Location of Copies
content: Series is scanned in entirety.
scopecontent: label: Scope and Contents
content: General correspondence is with friends, colleagues, galleries, museums, art institutions, art societies, publishers, universities and colleges, and United States Government agencies. There are letters from artists including Edwin Howland Blashfield, William Merritt Chase, Elliott Daingerfield, Cass Gilbert, Philip Leslie Hale and Lilian Westcott Hale, Karl von Rydingsvard, and J. Alden Weir.  Six folders of letters from George de Forest Brush and his wife Mary (Mittie) Taylor Whelpley Brush, reveal details about Brush's education in Europe, his experiences in Wyoming and Canada in the 1880s, and his later career. The letters also document the close relationship between the Brush and Volk families, recording their mutual sympathy and support during times of illness and bereavement, including the death of the Brush's infant son, Alfred, from cholera shortly after his birth in 1886, and Leonard Volk's death in 1891.

Also found is correspondence with writer and leader of the Ethical Society of St. Louis, Percival Chubb, and Volk family friend and founder of the Ethical Culture movement, Felix Adler and his wife Helen Goldmark Adler. Correspondence with the Buffalo Fine Arts Gallery, Albright Art Gallery includes personal and business related correspondence with Cornelia B. Sage Quinton, which documents, among other things, the gallery's purchase of Volk's Lincoln portrait for $5000. 

Correspondence with Beck Engraving Company relates to plates produced by the company from Volk's Lincoln portrait. Correspondence with Charles L. Hinton relates to Hinton's work on the Lincoln medal made from a portrait of Lincoln by Volk and produced by Whitehead & Hoag. Correspondence with Whitehead & Hoag also relates to Hinton's work.

Correspondence with Fred'k Southack & Alwyn Ball Jr. Inc. relates to Volk's New York City studio lease in the mid-1920s. 

National Academy of Design records include minutes of meetings and letters from Edwin Howland Blashfield, when Volk was the National Academy's Recording Secretary in the early 1920s. Correspondence with the Portland Society of Art documents the purchase by Cyrus H. K. Curtis of Volk's Lincoln portrait  With Malice Toward None which Curtis donated to the Society in 1927.

Correspondence with the United States Military Academy Museum, West Point relates to Volk's portraits of Major-General John G. Foster (1930), and Major-General Gordon Granger (1931).

One folder contains carbon copies of some of Volk's letters from 1920. These copies relate primarily to his contemporary portraits of government and military subjects and include letters directly to, or relating to, David Lloyd George, Brand Whitlock, Comte d'Arschot, and John J. Pershing.