Sketchbook: Studies for the Boston Public Library Mural "The Triumph of Religion": "Frieze of Prophets" 1890–95

Sketchbook with blue cloth-covered cardboard covers,blue leather spine
Eighteen pages of off-white wove paper;
25.3 x 36.7 cm
Gift of Mrs. Francis Ormond
1937.7.32

In 1890, John Singer Sargent was asked to create a series of murals for the Boston Public Library, then being built. The new library was seen as a temple of learning, and even the decorations were meant to educate and provoke. Sargent's first thought was to decorate the third-floor hall with scenes from Spanish literature, but the visual splendors of a trip to Egypt, Turkey, and Greece changed his mind. In a letter to Isabella Stewart Gardner, he wrote: "The consequence of going up the Nile, as might have been foreseen, is that I must do an Old Testament thing for the Boston Public Library," and he took as his new theme "The Triumph of Religion."(1)John Singer Sargent to Isabella Stewart Gardner, August 14 1891, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum Archives. The library project would occupy him for almost thirty years, with segments installed in 1895, 1903, 1916, and 1919. The final panel, depicting the Sermon on the Mount, was planned but never executed.

Sargent painted the murals on canvas in his London studio and shipped them to Boston for installation. The first section consisted of a lunette depicting the oppression of the Israelites by the Assyrians and Egyptians, an arched strip of vaulting showing a number of pagan gods, and a frieze of nineteen Old Testament prophets flanking the imposing figure of Moses executed in relief. This sketchbook records Sargent's attempts at capturing the positions and spatial relationships between the figures of the prophets. The prophets as painted and installed appear as individuals, with expressions ranging from hopeful and serene to dramatically despairing, while the prophets in the sketchbook are almost featureless. Drawn in gestural lines, however, they appear more agitated and vigorous than their painted counterparts. The creamy charcoal used throughout the majority of the sketchbook is ideally suited to capturing the strong, expressive forms. Some of the pages show a brown tonality where a fixative was applied, indicating a desire to protect the studies for later use.

The Fogg Art Museum owns thirty-four sketchbooks by Sargent, donated by the artist's sister, Mrs. Francis Ormond, in 1937. The sketchbooks date from the 1870s, when Sargent was a teenager, to 1918, when he visited the British troops in World War I. They contain early studies after the old masters, landscapes, quick portrait sketches, figure and architectural studies, notes, and doodles, revealing an artist of broad-ranging curiosity and invention.

John Singer Sargent to Isabella Stewart Gardner, August 14 1891, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum Archives.