Oliver Impey (1936–2005): an appreciation

Abstract

When we compiled an editorial introduction to the first-ever issue of the Journal of the History of Collections, Oliver Impey and I were of one mind in agreeing that we should never write another, for it was no part of our ambitions to use the Journal as a platform for our personal pronouncements. Seventeen years later, readers will easily accede to the appropriateness of setting aside this self-imposed ban so that one of the Journal's editors can record the passing of the other, for Oliver succumbed to pancreatic cancer on 7 September 2005. It is a matter of record that the Journal had its genesis in a conference hosted by the Ashmolean Museum on early museums of an encyclopaedic character, and the universal nature of Oliver's many-sided interests made him admirably suited to the prominent role he played in both enterprises. It might be said that collecting was in his blood: amongst his ancestors was Mary, Lady Impey, wife of a chief justice of the supreme court of India who, for a number of years in the late eighteenth century easily outshone all her contemporaries with the magnificent menagerie she established at the family's mansion in Calcutta and who commissioned a series of nearly 200 life-sized watercolour drawings of zoological specimens – especially of birds from her own collection – part of which today forms one of the treasures of the Bodleian Library. Although the genes of the Impeys of Calcutta were widespread (there were thirteen grandchildren of the marriage), it is tempting to see a direct echo of Lady Mary's originality, discerning eye and restless scholarship in the multi-faceted activities that characterized Oliver's life.