Henry Moore, Ideas for Sculpture, British, 1940. Watercolor, gouache, black ink, colored crayons, orange resinous ink, transparent crayon (wax resist), incised lines on off-white wove paper, 42.8 x 25.4 cm. Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University Art Museums. Gift of Lois Orswell, 1993.232. Photo: Peter Siegel © President and Fellows of Harvard College.

Designed to be easily portable, a sketchbook is often kept in an artist's pocket and offers an unusually personal glimpse into the artist at work. Drawings and notes in sketchbooks vary from travel sketches and nature and figure studies to copies after the Old Masters, expense accounts, and lists of pictures. Some sketchbooks are self-conscious, with every page signed, while others are filled with seemingly random, hastily drawn sketches and doodles. Still others reveal the progression of an idea or are conceived as a whole.

This exhibition features a selection of the Fogg's important sketchbooks, including works by Jean-Honoré Fragonard, Jacques-Louis David, Sanford Gifford, Edward Burne-Jones, John Singer Sargent, Reginald Marsh, George Grosz, and Christopher Wilmarth. The installation will also present pages from sketchbooks by John Constable, Edouard Manet, Henry Moore, Brice Marden, and others.

A Web site, www.artmuseums.harvard.edu/sketchbooks, focusing on a selection of sketchbooks from the collections of the Art Museums, will accompany the exhibition.

Organized by Miriam Stewart, assistant curator of drawings.

Press Release

Click here to listen to an audio clip by Miriam Stewart, curator of the exhibition