Edwin Whitefield graphic collection, 1860s-1880s
Item Information
- Title:
- Edwin Whitefield graphic collection, 1860s-1880s
- Description:
-
In the 1860s, after nearly thirty years of traveling throughout Canada and the United States for the purpose of sketching architectural structures and landscapes, artist Edwin Whitefield settled in Massachusetts. From there he commenced the huge undertaking of visually recording hundreds of historic houses in New England, a project that culminated in his publication of the series, "The Homes of Our Forefathers". The artist captured these colonial-type homes, built in the seventeenth and eighteenth- centuries with the highest attention paid to detail and precision. In his introduction to the 1886 volume of "The Homes of Our Forefathers", Whitefield stated that he purposely chose pencil and paintbrush rather than a camera for the depiction in order to show the buildings as they had originally been built and not with the alterations which had come about in the nineteenth-century. The collection consists of eighteen sketchbooks, fourteen file folders, a folder of loose unbound (some mounted) watercolors, and nine copies of "The Homes of Our Forefathers" (three volumes appear in duplicate). The collection also includes correspondence and examples of Whitefield's writings. Whitefield divided the sketchbooks by states: in each he put the heading of a town on a page and underneath provided an illustration of one of the houses to be found in that town. In many cases, sketches have been made on a separate sheet and then pasted into the appropriate slot. In some cases, Whitefield indicated the date on which the drawing was made (for example, in Book 1, dates attributed to various sketches are 1880, 1883, and 1887). He also preferred to use artistic license to omit trees and other obstructions that might obscure important features of the houses. The sketchbooks reveal Whitefield's ability at combining delicate pencil work, soft washes, and great detail. Starting with rough pencil sketches, he sometimes added details with pen or watercolor wash, and the collection contains an equal amount of preliminary pencil sketches and more complete colored renderings. Whitefield was deeply interested in the history of the houses he drew. He talked with the residents and searched for deeds in county registers throughout New England for verification of dates and names. In the margins of the sketches, he wrote annotations concerning the house name, builder, owner, date of building, and other pertinent information such as significant historical persons connected with the structure. Some of the homes were later destroyed in the development of the early-twentieth century tenements, and his drawings and lithographs became a valuable record and often the only one left of these homes. An article in the "Boston Journal" in 1889 praised Whitefield's sketches of the houses with the comment that "We cannot easily exaggerate the service which Mr. Whitefield has rendered in preserving them." Sources: Edwin Whitefield Collection finding aid; Guide to the Library and Archives, 20.
- Artist:
- Whitefield, Edwin
- Date:
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1860–1889
- Format:
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Drawings/Illustrations
Books
- Genre:
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drawings (visual works)
sketchbooks
books
- Location:
- Historic New England
- Collection (local):
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GC004: Edwin Whitefield graphic collection, 1860s-1880s
- Subjects:
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historic buildings
historic houses
- Places:
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Connecticut
Maine
Massachusetts
New Hampshire
Rhode Island
Vermont
- Extent:
- ca. 200 sketches
- Link to Item:
- http://gusn.us/180980
- Terms of Use:
-
Rights status not evaluated.
Contact host institution for more information.
- Identifier:
-
180980
- Call #:
-
GC004