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Identification and Creation

Object Number
1937.7.2.1-65
People
John Singer Sargent, American (Florence, Italy 1856 - 1925 London, England)
Title
Sketchbook ("1869"): Travel Sketches and Copies after the Antique
Classification
Drawings
Work Type
sketchbook
Date
1869
Culture
American
Persistent Link
https://hvrd.art/o/307663

Physical Descriptions

Medium
Sketchbook with black paper-bound cardboard covers and black cloth spine
Dimensions
15.6 x 24.4 cm (6 1/8 x 9 5/8 in.)
Inscriptions and Marks
  • label: front of album, black ink on paper: 1869
  • inscription: front pastedown, graphite, in artist's hand: Tyrolian [sic] Costume / Botzen / May 29th 1869; Proportions.

Provenance

Recorded Ownership History
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.

Acquisition and Rights

Credit Line
Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum, Gift of Mrs. Francis Ormond
Accession Year
1937
Object Number
1937.7.2.1-65
Division
European and American Art
Contact
am_europeanamerican@harvard.edu
Permissions

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Descriptions

Description
Sketchbook with black-paper-covered cardboard covers, black cloth spine; stamped in gilt on front cover: ALBUM. Pages of off-white wove paper. Sewn page block; gatherings vary. Sketchbook is incomplete, with sixty-five pages remaining. Eighty-eight drawings. A number of pages are missing: one after page 16, and approximately eight after page 17.

Contents: Numerous copies after antique sculpture and mosaics in Italian museums, including the Museo Archaeologico, Naples; the Accademis di San Luca, and the Capitoline and Vatican Museums, Rome; also, copies after "David" by Gianlorenzo Bernini and after "Aurora" by Guido Reni. Views of Naples, Mount Vesuvius, Capri, Tivoli, Ancona, Rimini, Frascati, Sorrento, Italian villas and temples. Also caricatures, Tyrolean costume studies, heraldic emblems and armor (Toledo). The front pastedown features a group of figures in watercolor over graphite and five heads in graphite. The back pastedown features drawings in graphite and brown ink of profile heads, a facade of a building with sculpture, and a man with a violin under a palm tree.

Publication History

  • John Singer Sargent and the Edwardian Age: The Documents, exh. cat., Detroit Institute of Arts (Detroit, MI, 1979), no. IE
  • Miriam Stewart and Kerry Schauber, "Catalogue of Sketchbooks and Albums by John Singer Sargent at the Fogg Art Museum", Harvard University Art Museums Bulletin (Cambridge, MA, Fall 1999 - Winter 2000), vol. 7, no. 1, pp. 16-38, p. 17; front pastedown, repr. p. 17
  • Stephanie Herdrich and Helen Barbara Weinberg, American Drawings and Watercolors in the Metropolitan Museum of Art: John Singer Sargent, The Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, NY, 2000), p. 48, under no. 8; p. 49, under no. 9
  • Bruce Robertson, ed., Sargent and Italy, exh. cat., Los Angeles County Museum of Art/Princeton University Press (Los Angeles, CA and Princeton, NJ, 2002), p. 100
  • Richard Ormond and Elaine Kilmurray, John Singer Sargent: Figures and Landscapes, 1900-1907, Yale University Press (U.S.) (New Haven and London, 2012), p. 208 (note 2)
  • Elizabeth Doe Stone, "Mobility and the Matter of Memory: John Singer Sargent's 'Robert Louis Stevenson and His Wife'", Art History (March 2019), pp. 1-25, p. 10
  • Paul Fisher, The Grand Affair: John Singer Sargent in His World, Farrar, Straus & Giroux (New York, 2022), p. 37

Exhibition History

  • John Singer Sargent and the Edwardian Age: The Documents, Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, 10/17/1979 - 12/09/1979
  • Sargent in the Studio: Drawings, Sketchbooks, and Oil Sketches, Harvard University Art Museums, Cambridge, 06/10/1999 - 09/26/1999

Related Works

Verification Level

This record has been reviewed by the curatorial staff but may be incomplete. Our records are frequently revised and enhanced. For more information please contact the Division of European and American Art at am_europeanamerican@harvard.edu