Monet's Sketchbooks

Claude Monet French, 1840 - 1926
The Luncheon on the Grass, c. 1865
black chalk on blue laid paper, 30.5 x 46.8 cm (12 x 18 7/16 in.)
Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon
1995.47.60
National Gallery of Art, Washington

Over on Making A Mark, my Garden in Art project continues - with a new focus on Monet. However this post focuses on Monet's Sketchbooks and includes a summary of the way in which Monet used his sketchbooks. I'd be interested to know how many people recognise his way of working.

The sketchbooks are part of an exhibition which I saw in London at the Royal Academy and which has now moved to the Clark Art Insititute in Massachusetts . All the sketchbook images for this post come through the link to the sketchbooks online. An earlier drawing by Monet from the National Gallery of Art in Washington can be seen above.

THIS UNPRECEDENTED EXHIBITION challenges the conventional, long-held understanding of Claude Monet's artistic process and life. Drawing upon recently discovered documents and a body of graphic work largely unknown to the public and scholars alike, the exhibition reveals that Monet (1840–1926) relied extensively upon drafting in the development of his paintings in addition to painting his subjects directly.
Introduction to the exhibition website - Stirling and Francine Clark Art Institute

This is the link to Monet's Sketchbooks from the Musee Marmottan in Paris which currently form part of the "Unknown Monet" exhibition at the Stirling and Francine Clark Art Institute in Williamstown MA (which finishes on Sunday 16th September).

The complete contents of these books—some three hundred drawings—have been newly photographed for inclusion in the accompanying interactive application. This digital presentation of Monet's sketchbooks gives unprecedented public access to works that are among his least refined yet some of his most intimate artistic utterances.
Clart Art Institute - Website Introduction to the sketchbooks

I saw this exhibition earlier this year when it was at the Royal Academy (see this post) - but despite two visits was unable to see the sketchbooks on the viewers in the exhibition - so I'm now especially pleased to be able to see them as they appear in the sketchbooks. A well researched and comprehensive catalogue is also available for the exhibition - The Unknown Monet: Pastels and Drawings (Clark Art Institute) The authors are James A Ganz and Richard Kendall and the book has been published by Yale University Press 2007. James A. Ganz is curator of prints, drawings, and photographs, and Richard Kendall is curator at large. Both work for the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute.

The sketchbooks normally form part of the collection of the Musee Marmottan - they were bequeathed to his son Michel (who appears in some of the drawings) who left them to the Marmottan. As the sketchbook site on the Musee website links to the Clark website, I'm wondering whether there may only 10 days left to look at them or whether this hugely informative resource will be available in the future. The credits indicate that the online version was a project undertaken by people from the Clark Art Institute with the co-operation of the Musee Marmottan and the Bridgeman Art Library. Many congratulations to all involved. This is a very worthy project of huge significance to those interested in Monet and all of us interested in how artists use sketchbooks generally and especially on their travels.

The images from the sketchbooks can also be viewed via the Bridgeman Art Library - if you know the number of the sketch as assigned by Bridgeman (given in the info below each sketch in the online presentation)! This is an example - a sketch of two young women in a rowboat at Giverny - from Book 6 page 9

Chapter 7 of the book produced for the exhibition reproduces a number of the sketches - but as anybody who uses sketchbooks will know, it's the act of looking at somebody's sketchbook which is intrinsic to the experience. We want to know how somebody works as well as what marks they make on the paper. This is where the online exhibition scores so significantly with me.

This is my summary of what has been gleaned about how Monet used sketchbooks. My source is Chapter 7 of the publication produced to accompany the exhibition.

Monet and Sketchbooks

• Monet habitually carried sketchbooks with him in his teenage years when he went on expeditions to draw landscapes. He then made use of sketchbooks from the very beginning of his professional career in the 1860s through to the 1920s.
• Ganz and Kendall suggest that he regarded the sketchbook as a working document and the sketches in them as having no intrinsic value

How Monet used Sketchbooks

• Monet seems to have used sketchbooks in a strictly functional and utilitarian way to:
• make drawings for their own sake - eg drawings of his children
• jot down visual ideas for exploratory purposes - both at home, Paris and other parts of France and abroad. It's suggested that he used to scout locations and that some are records of potential sites for future places to paint - the sketchbooks cover a large number of locations.
  
• produce rough drafts or preparatory studies at initial stages of working out a painting - selecting and framing motifs (eg the grainstacks in Sketchbooks 3 and 5)
  
• mark the outlines of motifs as subject matter within a view (and potentially a painting - for example see Book 2 and the drawings of the Gare Saint Lazare)
• record shapes and positions rather than detail
• record 'stock' images - for example of craft on the water or turkeys and ducks (which are, of course, forever changing position). A few of the sketches are obviously sequential and have a time lapse effect.
  
• The later sketchbooks have the least refined drawings. The drawings of waterlilies are the most abstract
• The graphic language of his sketches varies from the spare and minimalistic (outlines only) to evidence of retracing which suggests working on composition and design. There is little evidence of the use of tonal marking - although he modelled form in the charming drawings of his children (see Book 1)
• It's important to note what the sketchbooks lack. The sketchbooks contain
  
• relatively few annotations. Examples include notes about expenses, plant names in Latin and mailing addresses.
• almost no color notes. However he does record the time of day of the sketch.
  

Sketchbook Format and Media Used

• Sketches are not sequential - Monet seems to have opened sketchbooks at random. Some have been worked from the front and some from the back and not all the drawings are the same way up. He recycled - late drawings have been worked on over earlier sketches.
• The sketchbooks are landscape format - but many of the drawings are vertical (portrait format).
  
• Most of the sketches are executed using a soft or hard pencil - but some of the waterlily sketches were done in black chalk and black crayons
• The Marmottan sketchbooks tend to have medium thickness, neutral cream coloured paper - some are laid and some are wove. They have pages which are left blank and pages have been removed. The sketchbooks have been catalogued by Wildenstein - who assigned numbers to the drawings and sketches. However there is evidence that sketchbooks were used at different times so the order is not chronological. The authors of the book conclude - and I agree - that many of his sketchbooks have been lost.
  

The book observes how different the practices of individual painters are in relation to the keeping of sketchbooks. As we well know this continues to this day!

What I find interesting is that, apart from the few beautiful drawings of his children, I look at Monet's sketchbook drawings and would have no difficulty at all in characterising them as being what I would call the 'large thumbnail' variety. I have very many similar sketches in my own sketchbooks - and I've seen lots of similar work in other people's sketchbooks. Sometimes sketches are value based. Most often it's about finding the edges of the composition while working plein air and the relative positions and edges of the shapes of subject matter within your view - the old challenge of working out what can you fit in and what actually looks best. They are the sort of sketches I do while looking at a subject prior to developing a more finished drawing or sketch - they are the records of me trying to work out what to do. They look very scrappy. They aren't meant for public show. My guess is that Monet would have said much the same thing.

I do sincerely hope that some arrangement will be made so that these sketchbooks can stay online after the exhibition finishes or become available on a CD or DVD. It's a real privilege to be able to see them in the current online presentation.

Links:

• The Unknown Monet: Pastels and Drawings - Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute
• James A Ganz and Richard Kendall The Unknown Monet: Pastels and Drawings (Clark Art Institute) and it's published by Yale University Press 2007.
  
• Monet's Sketchbooks from the Musee Marmottan - online version
• Musee Marmottan (Note: Clicking the GB flag in the top right hand corner takes you to an English version of the site - but removes access to the link to the sketchbooks - which can also be accessed via the current exhibition's website )
• Bridgeman Art Library
  
• Making A Mark: The Unknown Monet - pastels and drawings
  
• Making A Mark: Gardens in Art continues - with Monet
  

A Canaletto View

A Canaletto View

(the Old Royal Naval College, Greenwich from Island Gardens on the Isle of Dogs)
8" x 10", pen and sepia ink and coloured pencil in Moleskine sketchbook
copyright Katherine Tyrrell

This a very famous view of a World Heritage Site and one of the most striking buildings in London - which has been painted by Antonio Canal (Canaletto).

On Saturday, we went for a walk around the south end of the Isle of Dogs, starting at Burrells Wharf where Isambard Kingdom Brunel's Great Eastern was built and launched and walking east along the Thameside Path and then looped back through the Mudchute , which is a 40 acre urban Farm - the largest in Europe.

The photo on the left is of Brunel at the launch of the Great Eastern - the largest ship in the world in the mid nineteenth century. Part of the slipway is still preserved.

Next to this was a colour works

Half way along our walk was Island Gardens and right across the river from island Gardens is this view. This is the site of the former Greenwich Palace, one of King Henry VIII's favourite hunting lodges. The layout and the architecture of what exists on the site today was designed by Sir Christopher Wren - with significant assistance from a number of other prominent architects. The hospital closed in 1869 and the building became the Royal Naval College - opening in 1973. The navy finally departed from the site in 1998. The building at the front of the site is now known as the Old Royal Naval College and is managed by the Greenwich Foundation and is home to part of Greenwich University.

The Queens House and Maritime Art in Greenwich.
The Queen's House can be seen between the two towers at the base of the hill in Greenwich Park. It houses the Maritime Art Collection in the National Maritime Museum - which contains a number of views of the site including the one from the North Bank of the Thames by Canaletto (click on the painting for a larger image).

The Gothenborg and the Cutty Sark
As I sketched pleasure boats came past with varying degrees of noisiness but they were all completely upstaged by the ship you can see in my photo. We were completely amazed to see the Gothenborg coming past, especially when the ship fired its cannons as it came past the Cutty Sark.

This ship is an exact Swedish replica of an 18th century Dutch East India merchant vessel which sailed out of London 262 years ago in 1745. It was built in 2002 and is the only ship like it in the world. It's just been on a visit to London.

For anybody reading this who is not aware, the Cutty Sark (a very famous - and fast - tea clipper located just to the west of the Old Naval College) was severely damaged by fire on 21st May 2007. You can see the masts of the Cutty Sark on this video of the panoramic view of the Maritime Heritage site from where I was sitting. We could see the blackened timbers from the other side of the river. Visit this link if you want to find out more about what happened and would like to consider contributing to its restoration. The Visitor Centre has now reopened.

"He who must not be bored while I sketch" and I were following a walk set out in a rather interesting book of walks in London called "Walking London's Docks, Rivers and Canals" by Gilly Cameron Cooper. It appears to be a very reliable book with a number of excellent walks.

Links:

• Old Royal Naval College - Canaletto View
• Maritime Art in Greenwich
• Maritime Greenwich - World Heritage Site
• Old Royal Naval College - official website
• Just Giving - Cutty Sark Appeal
• Wikipedia - Isle of Dogs

Byfield and Binney: London Sketchbook

Hardcover with colour, pencil and pen and ink illustrations.

96 pages. 10" × 11¼"(25 cm × 29 cm).
ISBN 981406811X; ISBN-13 978-9814068116.

Last year I bought London Sketchbook: A City Observed (Sketchbook) with watercolour paintings by artist Graham Byfield and text by architecural writer and conservationist Marcus Binney.

I'd previously acquired the Venice Sketchbook, in the same series, and had found it tremendously helpful when I was trying to locate different places worth drawing or painting prior to visiting Venice in 2005. I was naturally intrigued to see what sort of places had been selected for sketching on my home turf - London.

"When a man is tired of London he is tired of life......"
"Sir, if you wish to have a just notion of the magnitude of this city, you must not be satisfied with seeing its great streets and squares, but must survey the innumerable little lanes and courts. It is not in the showy evolutions of buildings, but in the multiplicity of human habitations which are crowded together, that the wonderful immensity of London consists."
Boswell: Life" Doctor Samuel Johnson (1709 - 1784)

The "London Sketchbook" book has great coverage of all manner of interesting places worth seeing - and sketching - in London. I recommend this book to both

• people who live in London - there's so much we take for granted! This book helps you to understand better the landmarks you know and where to look for places you've never seen before
  
• people visiting London, whether or not you've ever visited before, and
  
• artists wanting to sketch, draw or paint London.

The overall approach favoured by the book is to divide the book into sections based on areas - Central London, The City and East End, West London, North London and South of the River. Whole pages devoted to one view alternate with groupings of vignette sketches. This approach enables 150 watercolour paintings and pencil drawings to be included on a total of 96 pages and provides a good sense of place - as well as identifying the opportunities for sketching in an area.

Byfield's pencil drawings with watercolour added selectively are charming. He not only paints the large and better known buildings, he also focuses on less well known buildings and streets and some interesting architectural details. Each individual drawing/painting is also accompanied by a handwritten short commentary by Byfield on each individual painting.

However, it's now some 6 years since the book was published and some of the sketches involving skyline are now a little dated. For example, Byfield's panoramic views of the City of London from the top of Greenwich Park were rather fine - but were obviously executed pre-Gherkin.

Quite a lot of his subject matter is not easy to do quickly or without some reasonable grasp of perspective and architectural drawing. However, his vignettes of individual buildings and parts of buildings are well within the grasp of a lot of sketchers.

I found I had already drawn some of the things in his book. I'm not surprised his drawing of the interior of St Pauls Cathedral has no colour as you are very limited as to what can be taken inside the cathedral to draw. And I'm wondering what size paper he used as that interior is a BIG CHALLENGE! It took me ages. (You can see my various versions in the "Drawing the Bigger Inner Space" Gallery on my website.)

Binney provides an excellent overview at the beginning of the development of this capital city and its heritage in terms of the different architectural styles found around London. He also introduces the chapter for each area and says something about the places, the architecture and the historical associations of the places featured. He identifies the contrasts and challenges of architectural development over time at the same time as highlighting the conservation triumphs - such as Covent Garden Market. His knowledge is such that even if you've seen a place many times, the chances are you'll learn something new.

A more technical gazetteer at the end, again written by Binney, provides more detailed information about the age and background of each building.

I was absolutely fascinated to find that I'd seen most of the buildings included in the book at one time or another (maybe I've lived here too long?!) - but I didn't know that the Imperial War Museum in Lambeth is housed in the former Bethlehem Mental Hospital or that Constable used to live in a house in Well Walk in Hampstead!

Overall, rather than being a facsimile sketchbook with sketches done on the spot presented in timeline order, this is book which has been is compiled from various different sketches done at different times. The sketches are then presented in such a way as to make an attractive book.

Personally, I'd have liked to have seen at least a page devoted to equipment and approach to getting the sketches done. It did make me wonder just how many of the sketches were done 'plein air' and on the spot and how many were done from photographs.

Further reviews of books of interest to sketchbook artists can be found in the right hand column.

Notes:

• Graham Byfield is a forner graphic artist and creative director in advertising. He is now a full-time artist with his own gallery in Menorca, Spain.
  
• Marcus Binney OBE is the founder and president of Save Britain's Heritage, the Chairman of Save Europe's Heritage and the architectural correspondent at The Times; he received his OBE in 1983 and the London Conservation Medal in 1985.
• A shorter review first appeared in 'Making a Mark' on 29th May 2006
  

Links:

• London Sketchbook: A City Observed (Sketchbook) Graham Byfield and Marcus Binney, Thames and Hudson 2001
  
• The Samuel Johnson Sound Bite Page
  

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