More Recent Sketches

The collection consists of two notebooks and one sketchbook kept by the American painter John Trumbull. The first notebook is titled "Early sketches and drawings" and measures 19.5 by 16 cm. It contains sixty-six pages of undated ink and graphite exercises in perspective, four pages of diary entries made during a sea voyage between Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and London from December 1783 to January 1784, and a graphite landscape drawing annotated "Dec 30th 1783 at Sea." The remainder of the volume contains graphite and ink drawings of classical figures, landscapes, and facial expression exercises dated from 1772 to 1778. The second notebook is titled "Subscription the Print of Gibraltar" and measures 18 by 11.5 cm. It contains thirty pages of lists recording the names of patrons who subscribed to an engraving made after Trumbull's 1789 history painting "Sortie made by Garrison of Gibraltar." Trumbull collected subscriptions from April 1789 through July 1796, and the engraving by William Sharp was issued in London in 1799. The sketchbook titled "More Recent Sketches" measures 14.5 by 23 cm., and is dated from 1806 to 1808; it contains graphite drawings of Norwich Falls in Connecticut, David Hosack's Elgin Botanic Garden in New York City, multiple views of Niagara Falls, and scenes around Lake George and Canajoharie in New York State.