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A Day in the Life: Diaries from the Archives of American Art

February 2 to May 31, 2001
Exhibited in the Archives’ New York Research Center

Selected diaries from the collections of the Archives Of American Art, with related photographs and etchings.

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A Day in the Life: Diaries from the Archives of American Art

Etching of a man sitting by a creek, 1881 June

Creator: James David Smillie

In forty-five small leather bound volumes James D. Smillie kept a daily record of his paintings, drawings and prints, social engagements, health, travels, and acquaintances. A founder of both the American Watercolor Society and the New York Etching Club, he was also a member of the National Academy of Design and the Century Club and America's premiere landscape engraver.

In his entry for April 26, 1865, he writes about "having a supplemental varnishing day" at the National Academy of Design (the opening was postponed because of President Lincoln's death). On the following day Smillie sketches the Jersey City Ferry for the American Bank Note Company and sees proofs his steel engraving of Albert Bierstadt's painting The Rocky Mountains, Laner's Peak. In the evening he attends inaugural ceremonies for the opening of the new building for the National Academy of Design - "crowded to suffocation and very hot" - and in the midst of his busy day, throws in a reference to the capture of Lincoln's assassin.

Diary from the Smillie Family Papers. Gift of Barbara Curtis, 1978-1990.

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A Day in the Life: Diaries from the Archives of American Art

Robert Henri, ca. 1908

Creator: Peter A. Juley & Son

Robert Henri was best known as an inspirational teacher and a leader in the movement against academic art. In his diary he describes his visit to Venice in September 1891, when he was a student in Paris:

"Over to Sotto Marino-in a sail boat for a sou-a peculiar strip of town on a narrower strip of land than Croggia. The houses all stand alone, no party walls, are high, and their irregularity of tops and general independence of each other presents an odd character. A people wonderfully picturesque bright colored - more ancient in costume than their neighbors, barefooted & much display of legs-and almost nakedness among some children. All work out doors-every step presents a new picture. Everybody is preparing corn to dry in the sun or tying onions up in bunches principally women & children doing this. It's a place to make an artist to wild over color and character."

Diary from the Robert Henri Papers, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.

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A Day in the Life: Diaries from the Archives of American Art

Yusaf Grillo and Francis S. Merritt, 1974

In 1974 Francis Sumner Merritt, director of the Haystack Mountain School of Crafts in Deer Isle, Maine, traveled to Nigeria to meet with African artists and to interview prospective candidates for their participation in an African American craft session at Haystack. He kept a detailed diary of his appointments.

In his entry for March 28, Merritt bargained for African beads, fabric, and pottery in the Jankara Market on Lagos Island in Nigeria and later met with the American Ambassador John E. Reinhardt.

Diary from the Francis Sumner Merritt Papers. Gift of Francis Sumner Merritt, 1980-1994.

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A Day in the Life: Diaries from the Archives of American Art

George Biddle, 1936

It was George Biddle who recommended to his longtime friend Franklin Roosevelt a federal relief art program for artists during the Depression, giving rise to the Public Works of Art Project and the subsequent art projects of the Treasury Department and Works Progress Administration.

Biddle painted murals for the Department of Justice in 1935 under the auspices of the Section of Painting and Sculpture, which later became the Section of Fine Arts, as well as several other mural commissions for the government. Biddle, who was an acute observer, kept copious diaries which he clearly expected to publish. He also had an uncanny knack for remembering details and even whole conversations, which he poured into his diary. In his entries from May 1955, he recalls visiting Georgia O'Keeffe.

Transcripts were made by Archives of American Art staff from typescripts of the original diaries provided by Biddle. Originals now in the Library of Congress, Manuscript Division.