Sketchbook: Studies for the Boston Public Library Mural "The Triumph of Religion": "Frieze of Prophets"

Artists

Description

Sketchbook with limp, blue-cloth-covered cardboard covers, and blue leather spine. Pages of off-white wove paper. Sewn page block. Sketchbook is incomplete, with eighteen pages remaining. Thirty-three drawings. The pages are numbered in red-brown ink in the upper right corner. Contents: Overall compositional studies and individual figure studies for the "Frieze of the Prophets" at the Boston Public Library, including the prophets Joel, Elijah, Obadiah, and Moses; a portrait sketch of a woman tentatively identified as Mrs. Kate Moore and a portrait sketch of an unidentified woman; a sketch of a seated man and one of a carriage with coachmen (identified by McKibbin as "Queen Victoria caricatured in state carriage"). Also a comical sketch and an anamorphic skull (cf. 1937.7.11, fol. 32)Back pastedown has comical sketch and anamorphic skull drawn in graphite, along with a row of calculations.

Dimensions

25.3 x 36.7 x 0.9 cm (9 15/16 x 14 7/16 x 3/8 in.)

Provenance

To the artist's sisters, Violet (Mrs. Francis) Ormond and Emily Sargent, at his death, 1925; gift of Mrs. Ormond to the Fogg Art Museum, 1937.