Sketching - George Fuller
Medium
pen and brown ink over graphite on wove paper
Dimensions
sheet: 18.3 × 13.9 cm (7 3/16 × 5 1/2 in.)
Classification
Drawing
Department
CG-W
Museum
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Credit
John Davis Hatch Collection
Accession Number
1979.20.117
Art Historical Context
This intimate drawing by American sculptor John Quincy Adams Ward captures fellow artist George Fuller at work in 1858. Titled *Sketching - George Fuller*, the small sheet offers a rare glimpse into the creative exchange between two figures active in mid-nineteenth-century American art. Ward, best known for his monuments rendered in bronze, here demonstrates his skill with more delicate media, portraying Fuller absorbed in the act of drawing. Executed in pen and brown ink over graphite on wove paper, the work highlights the artist’s fluid line and economical use of shading. Measuring just ove...
About the Artist
John Quincy Adams Ward · 1830–1910
John Quincy Adams Ward (1830–1910) was born in Urbana, Ohio, the fourth of eight children, and displayed an early aptitude for three-dimensional form, modeling figures in clay from childhood. In 1849 he moved to Brooklyn, New York, to apprentice under the sculptor Henry Kirke Brown, with whom he worked for seven years. Brown's emphasis on American subjects and his conviction that sculpture should ...