Sketchbook II

Art Historical Context

This compact sketchbook, created by Arthur B. in 1881, offers an intimate glimpse into the artist’s formative years. Measuring just over four by seven inches, the volume features a sturdy maroon buckram cover protecting its tinted pages, which contain designs rendered in graphite and watercolor. Such portable formats were essential tools for artists of the period, allowing them to record observations and experiment freely while traveling or working outdoors. The combination of graphite line work with delicate watercolor washes on colored paper demonstrates Davies’s early interest in tonal effects and spontaneous mark-making. As a sketchbook rather than a finished piece, it reveals the private, iterative side of artistic practice—studies, ideas, and technical trials that often precede more public works. Housed in the Art Institute of Chicago’s Prints and Drawings department, this object underscores the enduring value of such personal volumes. They preserve not only individual creativity but also broader insights into late-nineteenth-century drawing materials and habits.

About the Artist

Arthur B. Davies · 1862–1928

Arthur Bowen Davies (1862–1928) occupies one of the most paradoxical positions in American art history: a painter whose own canvases were lyrical, dreamlike, and rooted in the classical tradition, yet whose organizational energy and curatorial vision helped force American audiences into direct confrontation with the European avant-garde. Born on 26 September 1862 in Utica, New York, to English and...