Silverpoint sketchbook with stylus, ca. 1900-1910
Sketchbook with blue cloth–covered cardboard covers, black cloth strap and black leather stylus sleeve
Silverpoint, graphite, and ink
Gift of Josephine Haskell Aldridge in memory of Richard Aldridge (Class of 1952)
AC 1996.472.a,b
This exhibition includes a small selection of pages from Haskell’s silverpoint sketchbook. The sketchbook was manufactured to be used with an accompanying silverpoint stylus that fits into a sleeve attached to the front cover. Haskell’s book is one example of a “silverpoint kit” that nineteenth-century artists’ suppliers offered during the resurgence of critical and popular interest in master drawing techniques.
Haskell’s sketchbook was manufactured by James Newman, a prominent London-based company that was one of the artist’s primary suppliers of art materials. The book may have originally contained at least nine pages (eighteen sheets) of commercially prepared paper. Haskell may have detached several pages of the book to isolate preliminary studies and finished drawings.
Drawing in metalpoint is a labor-intensive process that requires forethought, patience, and manual coordination. The artist uses a metal stylus to create delicate, inerasable lines on paper that has been coated with a slightly abrasive material. (While metals such as copper and gold can be used, the physical properties of silver made it the more common choice.) The metal marks appear as luminous gray lines, which, after being exposed to air, tarnish to a warm brown tone. Erasing is difficult, and pressing on the stylus only tears the sheet: to achieve tonal contrast and variation, the artist must apply innumerable layers of delicate shading.
Haskell employed silverpoint for nearly a decade with three objectives: to gain technical skill, create professional portraits, and make preparatory drawings for etchings. His sketchbook is filled with miscellaneous inscriptions—including quotations from Ralph Waldo Emerson’s The Conduct of Life—portrait sketches, compositional sketches, and preliminary studies for prints.
Visitors may request to see this object in the Mead’s William Green Study Room when it is no longer on display in the museum.