Sketchbook with studies for the book The Tower of London

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Sketchbook with studies for the book The Tower of London

Artist George Cruikshank I (British, 1792-1878)

Dateabout 1839

Dimensionsbook: 4 13/16 x 7 1/2 in. (123 x 190mm)
page: 4 3/4 x 6 5/8 in. (120 x 168mm)

Mediumoriginal drawings: 53 pencil sketches paper: cream wove paper

ClassificationBooks

Credit LineMuseum Purchase

Object number

1923.63

Not on View

Label TextNineteenth-century British caricaturist and book illustrator George Cruikshank produced this sketchbook of preparatory work for the engraved illustrations in William Harrison Ainsworth’s book The Tower of London (also shown here). The story was published serially in 1840 and describes the history of Lady Jane Grey (1536/37–1554), the disputed Queen of England for nine days. Cruikshank’s sketches were made on site at various locations in the Tower of London complex, showing the care he took to be exact in his backgrounds for the illustrations. Both the sketchbook and the printed book are opened to the page illustrating the interior of the 14th-century Cradle Tower, one of the 21 towers that form the Tower of London complex. Sketchbooks are part of what an artist uses to explore ideas about composition and detail. For the viewer they offer a personal glimpse of the artist at work, though artists generally kept them hidden away.Exhibition HistoryToledo Museum of Art, Out of Sight, June 18-Aug. 29, 2010 (no cat.).