Art] Diary and Sketchbook; with Sketches of Franklin and Marshall Academy (1927).
An illustrator’s diary and sketches
Grose, Helen Mason. Manuscript Diary. March, 1950-October, 1963.
8vo.; all edges gilt; brown leather wrappers; stamped in gilt. In a specially made cloth slipcase.
Grose’s sketchbook diary; signed by her on the front endpaper, “Helen M. Grose/Kingston – R.I.” The first two pages of the diary have been cut out, and the first entry, written on the page with the printed date “January 5,” has been crossed out and re-dated March 15th, 1950. The entries and sketches continue regularly through August, 1952, filling half of the notebook. Following the August, 1952 diary entry, there are about a dozen additional sketches from 1963.
The first 50 pages document a road trip that Grose went on with her husband, from March 15- April 2, 1950. The couple began in Rhode Island, traveled west and south through Connecticut, New Jersey, Delaware and Maryland, headed north through Virginia and Pennsylvania, and then returned home. These pages contain the majority of the diary entries; the rest of the pages are mostly sketches, with only a few interspersed textual entries. The sketches document Grose’s travels throughout the East Coast. There are three sketches of Mystic harbor, in Connecticut; four maritime scenes of Wickford, Rhode Island; and other sketches from Princeton, New Jersey; Sugarloaf, Maine; Jaffrey, New Hampshire’ Sturbridge, Massachusetts and Brewster Beach on Cape Cod.
Boxed together with:
Lithographs, loose illustrations and Christmas cards, ca. 100 pieces; drawn and designed by Grose; ca. 1918-1950s.
Broken down as follows:
10 Christmas cards designed for Elizabeth Elliott, an illustrator, and her husband Huger, the Director of the Rhode Island School of Design; 1918-1941. There are also 6 other Christmas cards that have been designed for other families, including “the Meads”; “the Burlingames”; “Ben and Betty Slade” and “Stanley and Florence Gairloch.” The Gairloch’s were prominent Rhode Islanders; there is a fund set up in their names at the Rhose Island Foundation, a philanthropic organization.
Ca. 25 colored illustrations; some with captions; apparently excised from books that Grose illustrated.
Ca. 20 black and white illustrations; to be used as book illustrations; printed on matte paper. All of these illustrations are initialed by Grose in pencil, at the bottom right corners of each page, and contain a catalogue reference number at the top right hand corners. About six of the illustrations have Grose’s penciled notes. On a drawing of two schoolgirls carrying books and lunch pails, Grose has written “Take out shadow on hat” and drew a line to the hat the girl is wearing. On another, of a girl holding an umbrella by a well, Grose writes, “Take out modeling” and drew a line pointing at the girl’s cheek.
Ca. 12 black and white illustrations; apparently proofs or drafts; printed on shiny white paper.
Ca. 9 black and white photographs; some of these appear to have been used as “models” for Grose to work from in her illustrations.
Boxed together with:
[Grose, Helen Mason] Sketches of Franklin and Marshall Academy (Founded 1787). 1897-1927. Published in the 140th year of the school on the 30th Anniversary of the present Principal. [Lancaster, Pennsylvania]: Edwin M. Hartman, A.M., Pd.D, [1927]
8vo.; tan paper-covered boards; brown paper-covered spine; stamped in gilt; chipped at the middle of the spine; else fine.
First edition; of this book of sketches of the Franklin and Marshall Academy, illustrated by Helen Mason Grose. OCLC 5.
Helen Mason Grose was born in 1880; it is not known when she died. She illustrated a number of children’s books; perhaps the most well-known among these is Kate Douglas Wiggin’s Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm (1903). She also illustrated Eleanor Hodgman Porter’s Just David (1916) and The Tangled Threads (1919), and Cornelia Meigs’s The Crooked Apple Tree (1929).
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