Life Drawing Class taught by Allyn Cox (1896-1982), Art Students League, New York City, August 1940. Photograph by Alan Fisher. Allyn Cox Papers, Archives of American Art.
Life Drawing Class taught by Allyn Cox (1896-1982), Art Students League, New York City, August 1940. Photograph by Alan Fisher. Allyn Cox Papers, Archives of American Art. | Hundreds of sketchbooks in the Archives of American Art form a vast repository of ideas, perceptions, inspirational imagery, and graphic experiments. As personal records they afford an intimate glimpse of an artist's visual thinking and reveal aspects of their creative process. |
Sketchbooks are as varied as the artists who keep them. Urban-scene painter Reginald Marsh cut and bound scraps of paper to fit the size of his coat pocket. Avant-garde advocate John Graham snatched moments in a busy career to doodle in a leatherbound diary. Albert Kahn copied architectural details and patterns for future projects, and Oscar Bluemner kept painting diaries with copious notes on his color theories.
This selection of sketchbooks demonstrates the broad range of material available for research at the Archives of American Art from academic notebooks with anatomical studies to illustrated journals, ranging in date from the 1840s to the 1970s. This is the online version of a display at the Archives' of American Art's New York Regional Center on view from September 5 through December 31, 1997.
Visual Thinking was organized by Southeast Regional Collector Liza Kirwin with assistance from Kym Wheeler and Annie Livingston.
Please click on a picture or an artist's name to view the sketchbook and its description.
 John Graham |  Lena Gurr |  Whitney Halstead |
 William Harnett |  Palmer Hayden |  Albert Kahn |
 Karl Otto Knaths |  Reginald Marsh |  Willard Metcalf |
 F. Luis Mora |  David Park |  James Penney |
 Fairfield Porter |  Russell Smith |  Xanthus Smith |
 George Tooker |  Weems |  Adolph Alexander Weinman |
