Sketchbooks

Great collection of artists' sketchbooks put online by Harvard University. The blurb, rather disappointingly, alludes to 34 books by John Singer Sargent, but there are none actually featured. Still, they do have a magnificent one from Edward Burne-Jones, the pre-Raphaelite, containing anatomical studies and some breathtaking drapery. And if that sounds like an unlikely pairing of words, here's just one example:




Also featured are sketchbooks by New Hampshire artist Benjamin Champney, Henri-Edmond Cross, friend of the Pointillists, the great Jacques-Louis David, painter of the Revolution (and Napoleon), watercolour doodles by Paul Feeley, and an almost illegible book by Jean-Honoré Fragonard.

There are also links to lots more online sketchbook resources. One in particular that floats my boat: a massive collection of sketchbooks by Turner organised by decade from the 1780s to the 1840, at the Tate.


(via notebookism)