Fonds consists of the papers of J. Russell Harper which includes the following: a small amount of personal material; material relating to his teaching career; general correspondence; correspondence with artists; research material comprising copies of artists' letters; research files on historical and contemporary artists and various subjects relating to art; inventories of private and public collections; lectures, articles and miscellaneous writings; research material and manuscripts relating to "Early Painters and Engravers in Canada", sculptors, stoneware and stained glass, architecture, W.G.R. Hind, "Painting in Canada", Paul Kane, "A People's Art", Cornelius Krieghoff and arctic research; and other material, 1624-1988.
The fonds also contains photographs showing architectural and sculptural works, which includes views of churches, museums, galleries, statues, headstones, paintings, sculptures in Ontario and Quebec from 1940-1967 taken by J. Russell Harper. There are also photographs taken by Ramsay Traquair of Quebec churches, 1926-1937 used for a work entitled, "The Old Architecture of Quebec". There are photographs by Dora De Pédery-Hunt, Kazuo Nakamura, de Greeff Studios Ltd., United Press International, and Alan Gordon. These photographs are of J. Russell Harper in various professional and social contexts, mostly unidentified, including portraits with his wife Elizabeth and daughter Jennifer on the occasion of receiving an honourary degree from the University of Guelph, 1972; photographic portraits of artists and colleagues of J. Russell Harper including Kazuo Nakamura, Diane and Peter Waxer, Harold Town, Walter Yarwood, Henri Hébert, Fritz Brandtner, Jack Humphrey, Gershon Ishkowitz, a photograph believed to be New York art critic Clement Greenberg; and the Jarvis Collegiate baseball team with Cornelius Krieghoff III (second from the left), 1922-ca. 1972.
Also included are five greeting cards sent to J. Russell Harper by Dolores and James Henderson Boyd, Jack and Jean Humphrey, Fritz Brandtner, and an unidentified source. The works on the cards are by James Henderson Boyd, Jack Humphrey, and Fritz Brandtner.
The fonds also contains sound recordings of interviews recorded in 1975 by J. Russell Harper with Kathy MacKay and Nellie King relating to the Group of Seven artist Frederick Horsman Varley. MacKay, who was a personal friend and model for Varley and King, who studied under him at the Doon School of Fine Arts, provide insights into the life and work of Varley during the late 1940s and 1950s.
