Sketchbooks That Spoke - Part Two

I found another set of sketchbooks with journalistic images and narratives.

Last week I featured a few of the journalistic sketchbooks that document events, tell stories, and engage with the world in ways that are newsworthy. Here are a few more I found in my search at antiquarian bookshops and on websites. These sketchbooks don’t just capture moments but report, illuminate and inform.

---

Men at Work at the New York World's Fair Souvenir Book, 1964 by Luciano Guarnieri

Luciano Guarnieri’s vigorous paintings created on-site at the New York World's Fair capture construction scenes and workers. His style blends realism with an expressionist touch.

---

An Illustrated Account of a 'Plucky Fight' with Burglars, 1895 by Amelia Lochner

Amelia Lochner created a narrative of sorts in 66 pages of pencil sketches, newspaper clippings and collage. She illustrates the tale of her violent confrontation with two burglars who broke into her bedroom one night and attempted to steal her purse and jewelry from a trunk at the foot of her bed.

---

Sketches by Maurice Prendergast, 1899

Maurice Prendergast carried a sketchbook wherever he traveled and filled 88 of them in his lifetime. He works in crayon, pencil and watercolor; making brisk notations of his impressions. This facsimile, published by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, contains sketches made of his stylish life in Boston, Paris and Venice.

---

The Israel Sketchbooks, 1968 by Hans Erni

Swiss artist Hans Erni presents his impressions of Israeli landscapes, people, and cultural heritage. He also explores some biblical and historical motifs, and the occasional hammerhead shark.

---

Risqué Hungarian Art Sketchbook, 1950 by Tibor Toncz

Tibor Toncz was a Hungarian painter, graphic artist and caricaturist. This is a humorous, between-the-Wars look at risqué Hungarian humor with 32 original pencil drawings. Perhaps half of them would be considered risqué.

---

---

Sketchbook of North Carolina, Florida, and Rondout, NY, 1940-1942 by Henry Ellis Matttson

From 1940 to 1942 Swedish artist Henry Ellis Matttson documented his travels through North Carolina, Florida and New York making watercolor landscape studies and regional impressions from a foreigner’s perspective.

---

Stuart Davis Sketchbooks, 1986

This sketchbook, made during extended stays in Gloucester, Massachusetts in 1932 and 1933, offers a rare glimpse into Stuart Davis’s thought process and compositional experiments, especially during a pivotal period when his work was evolving toward modernist abstraction and later his jazz-inspired compositions.

---

The Hokusai Sketch-Books: Selections from the Manga,1958

Katsushika Hokusai made sketches of everyday life in 18th C. Japan, including flora and fauna, the supernatural and even self-defense techniques. They were converted to three-color block prints. Note: The word 'manga' was used in the Edo period to mean preparatory sketches for paintings. In modern Japanese it has come to mean comics.

---

This is the second in a series about the visual journalism I found in artists’ sketchbooks. Here’s the first one. Stay tuned for more, and if you’d like to support this research, becoming a paid subscriber for $65 per year makes a real difference.