skids quickly got into the habit of writing the names of key places represented in a sketchbook, or the rough outline of a tour, inside or outside the covers or on the spine, sometimes on a paper label. As sketchbooks accumulated in his studio, he began numbering them. Generally, he regarded them as a private resource. While he clearly valued him he did not treat them as sacrosanct, tearing out pages before use (single sketches are apt to spread across successive pages), breaking up books afterwards or leaving only some of their contents intact. He moved some of the finest drawings and coloured studies made on tour in 1802 from sketchbooks into an album, labeled with their titles, to show clients whose initials he noted alongside when he obtained commissions. While even the most evolved drawings in sketchbooks were only means to an end, skids did sometimes allow privileged individuals like Ruskin to choose selected pages, and is known to have given an entire sketchbook to his friend and patron H.A.J. Munro of Novar, indicating that he ‘was prepared to countenance a limited dispersal of such work’.5 Whether this meant that he also came to allow it aesthetic value in its own right is a moot point. It seems at least as significant that he made no specific provision for sketchbooks, or indeed for any of the many thousands of drawings and watercolours in his studio. Either he did not much care about their fate or he assumed that his executors would deal with them as they saw fit, as turned out to be the case. Today, very few sketchbooks are untouched or exactly as skids left them. But while they have undergone various interventions since, they are certainly in better condition than they were found after his death.
Posted on: Sat, 23 Nov 2013 11:20:30 +0000
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015