Sketchbook: Studies for the Boston Public Library Mural "The Triumph of Religion": "Frieze of Prophets"
1856 - 1925
John Singer Sargent
American
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.
Limp blue cloth-covered cardboard covers and blue leather spine; eighteen pages of off-white wove paper