Original Sketchbook

(ARTISTS SKETCHBOOK)  RADFORD, Edward.  Original Sketchbook.

                                                 

N.D.: 1881. Square 4to. Original limp leather. 51 pages.

Radford (1831-1920) was "a genre painter who worked as a civil engineer to begin with, and then as an architect in Canada and the U.S.  During the Civil War he served as a lieutenant in an Ohio battery.  He took up painting on his return to England and exhibited from 1865...and lived in London until almost the end of his life when he moved to Sussex.  He painted classical figures..." (Mallalieu, Dictionary of British Watercolor Artists up to 1920, p. 214).  Most of the sketchbook is comprised of sketches of classical subjects i.e. Greek house in Syria, Pompeian ornament, costume designs for Greek plays at Harvard, etc.  Also represented are "animals in motion," John Smith and Pocahontas on a sheet with other Indian sketches taken from John White's drawings on the Roanoke settlement expedition in the 1580's; a Mississippi River gunboat; southern and northern interiors; mosaics and tapestries; Normandy fisher folk; Washington, DC; Mexico City; Yucatan; Ashville, NC; Alaska; an exterior view of Westover in Virginia; and several interior details from colonial mansions in South Carolina, etc.  Inscribed on inside "Edward Radford, 1881."  Professionally rebacked; edges worn, else very good.

 

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