Below is a current list of artists' sketchbooks and diaries held in the Archives, each with a brief description and links to the finding aid or catalog record when available.
Artists' Sketchbooks and Diaries
Artists' Sketchbooks and Diaries
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Anton Mauve Sketchbook
Anton Mauve (1838–1888) was a Dutch realist painter. His best known paintings depict peasants working in the fields and his paintings of flocks of sheep were especially popular in America. He was a leading member of the Hague school of painters and was influenced by the French painters Jean-François Millet and Camille Corot. This small sketchbook (7.5 x 4.5 in.) contains approximately forty sketches of landscapes, figures, and animals, mainly executed in charcoal.
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Clarke Sketchbook
Small sketchbook (approximately 9 x 6 in.) contains about twenty-five pencil drawings, mainly of houses, sailboats, and lighthouses in Indiana and Massachusetts. The drawings were executed by William E. Clarke, a well-known organist in Massachusetts, and his brother, Lynn Winthrop Clarke (1877–1932), a judge, when they were young.
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John Appleton Brown Sketchbooks
John Appleton Brown (1844–1902) was an American Impressionist painter. These two small sketchbooks include approximately thirty pencil drawings of lake and mountain landscapes and structures in the Swiss Alps, and approximately thrity-five pencil sketches of landscapes, figures, and botanical specimens.
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Thomas Sully Manuscript and Sketches
Manuscript written in Thomas Sully's hand in a notebook with lined paper, titled "Incidents in the life of Thomas Sully; chiefly of painting." Sully, who wrote the account when he was 88 years old, describes his technique, imparts formulas, relates his experiences, and refers to British and American artists of the period such as Gilbert Stuart, Rembrandt Peale, John Singleton Copley, and Benjamin West. Two original ink sketches for Sully's portraits of John Quincy Adams, 1823, and General Lafayette, 1826, accompany the manuscript.
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Walter and Matilda Gay Collection
Walter Gay (1856–1937) was an American artist known for his paintings of interiors. For the better part of his life, Gay lived in France, where he met and married heiress and fellow expatriate Matilda E. Travers (1855–1943). The bulk of this collection is formed by Matilda Gay's diaries, which provide detailed insight into the Gays' daily life as well as American expatriate life in France before, during, and after World War I. The collection also contains correspondence, photographs (including an album of photographs of Walter Gay's early paintings), material relating to the death of Walter Gay, and various artifacts and printed material.