Sketchbook of pencil and ink drawings, ca. 1890 / Tom Roberts

PXA 2480

fonds

ca. 1890

Graphic Materials, Drawings

152545

Drawings - 1 tan-colour leather covered sketchbook, rubbed and stained around its spine and with yellow endpapers. A pen sketch of a man's head is on the upper right of the cover. Sketchbook is 60 pages, compiled from irregularly cut sheets of laid paper - some with Whatman and some with Michali[?] watermarks. A number of pages have been torn from the sketchbook. - 17.3 x 25.1 closed; pages are irregular sizes 16 x 24 cm or less

Sketchbook comprises mainly pen and pencil figure studies. There are a number of head studies of men and women, and studies of women reclining, reading and playing pianos. There are also a couple of slight pencil sketches of children, and some topographical sketches

Research notes available in Mitchell Library Reading Room, PXn 575 -

Pencil sketch on f.5 relates to the oil painting, now in the National Gallery of Australia, "Mending the Sails", 1886-87.

Fourteen other Tom Roberts' sketchbooks, from the early 1880s to the 1920s, are at PXA 2481/1-14.

Dated ca. 1890, approximately by costume of subjects, preliminary sketch for 'Mending the sail', 1886-1887 (Gallery of Australia) and comparison with other sketchbooks in the Mitchell Library's collection, such as those at PXA 2481/1-14 (microfilm copies at CY 588 - CY 600), e.g. vol. 13 which has been dated by Helen Topliss to 1895-1898.

Pen portrait of the head of a man on p.23 appears to be dated "Mar 8[9]?"