Sketchbook
1856 - 1910
Henri-Edmond Cross
French
The sketchbook came to the Fogg Art Museum as a loose collection of folded pages, with no cover. The consistency of the paper and the media indicates that the sheets were all part of the same sketchbook. The pages were originally sewn together, but there no longer are threads in the sewing holes. The sketchbook was catalogued as if it were bound, with numbers assigned to each page. The present order of the pages, divided into two signatures, was determined by close examination in the Fogg's paper conservation lab, taking into account the size and edges of the sheets, the position and size of the sewing holes, and the offsetting of media onto adjacent pages.
The first signature is 1964.15.1-14 and is made out of six pieces of paper folded together and two loose sheets half the size of the other sheets. After examination, the two half-sized sheets were inserted as pages 6 and 7. The second signature is 1964.15.15-22 and is made out of four pieces of paper folded together. Both signatures have pages with some of the upper edges trimmed, some not. One single sheet might be trimmed at the top and bottom, at one edge, or not at all.
Page 15 contains the watermark A. Lepage Ainé Tochon-Lepage Succr.
Unbound; twenty-two pages of off-white wove paper