Study for "Gil Blas and the Archbishop" (from Sketchbook of Figure and Landscape Subjects)

Francis William Edmonds

ca. 1839 · Graphite on off-white wove paper · The American Wing

The execution of sketches and studies was a crucial part of Edmonds’s creative process. Many of his drawings exist as independent works--apparently never taken further--but many others represent an initial step in his conception for paintings. This sketchbook, which he began about 1838, includes both types of drawings of a variety of subjects. The present work is a well-developed preparatory study for Edmonds’s oil painting of about 1849 “Gil Blas and the Archbishop.” The theme derives from Alain-René Lesage’s eighteenth-century French novel “Histoire de Gil Blas de Santillane,” which Edmonds had read in a translation by the English picaresque novelist

Artist

Francis William Edmonds

Date

ca. 1839

Medium

Graphite on off-white wove paper

Culture

American

Department

The American Wing

Credit line

Sheila and Richard J. Schwartz Fund, 1987