Marietta Minnigerode Andrews (1869-1931), Sketchbook 1892, trip to Europe and United States, 1892 | 

Black ink, pen, pencil, and watercolor on white paper, 10 7/8 × 9 15/16 in. (27.6 × 25.2 cm) |

Gift from the Trustees of the Corcoran Gallery of Art (Gift of Mrs. Armistead Peter III (Caroline Ogden-Jones) |

 

Left page: "The Young Godfather,” "From the Fresco in Campo Santo...Purgatory," and "Poppies from Pisa.”

Right page: Two donkeys from Capri ("Michelangelo" and "Raphael"), Woman on a donkey, and a window in Rome.

 

Marietta Minnigerode Andrews was the first female instructor at the former Corcoran School of Art in Washington, DC, where she herself had studied drawing. Inspired by her studies and instructors, Andrews joined her cousin on a trip to Italy in 1892. Since the seventeenth century, Western artists had visited Italy as part of the Grand Tour—a journey of several weeks or years to see canonical artworks and landmarks firsthand. This object reveals the extent to which artists’ sketchbooks do not necessarily present an unmediated view of reality. In this case, Andrews’s classical taste and training informed her interest in such subjects as the windows, poppies, donkeys, and even the cherub seen here. As much as her sketchbook is a record of her trip, then, it is also a record of the various texts and images she consulted prior to it.