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The Arader Gallery provided BYU Library with the following statement of Provenance: "Mr. Arader purchased the collection of Eastman's work from a colleague in New York, Mr. Michael Frost of J.N. Bartfield Galleries. Bartfield Galleries purchased the collection from a Miss Pamela Miller, who is the Great, Great, Great, Grand-Daughter of Captain Eastman."
Open for public use.
It is the responsibility of the researcher to obtain any necessary copyright clearances.
Permission to publish material from Seth Eastman Drawing Book must be obtained from the Supervisor of Reference Services and/or the Special Collections Board of Curators.
Seth Eastman, illustrator, Indian painter, landscape artist, and Army officer, was born in 1808 in Brunswick, Maine. He died in Washington D.C. in 1875. Eastman graduated from West Point in 1829 after studying drawing under Thomas Gimbrede. He was first assigned to Fort Crawford on the Mississippi River (in Wisconsin), a meeting place for the surrounding Indian tribes. Eastman's sketches document several these meetings. In 1830 he moved to Fort Snelling (now Minneapolis). The next year he was selected for topographical reconnaissance, and in this capacity he began a series of sketches of the frontier forts. He returned to West Point as an assistant teacher of drawing from 1833-1840, studying privately with C.R. Leslie and Robert W. Weir and holding exhibits at the NAD and the Apollo Gallery.
After participating in the Seminole War in Florida in 1840-1841,
Eastman returned to Fort Snelling as a captain from 1841 to 1848. There he
began seriously to sketch the Indian country, sometimes working from
daguerreotypes. After a tour of duty in Texas in 1848-1849, he was ordered to
Washington. His wife, Mary Henderson Eastman [1818-1890] wrote and he
illustrated a successful Indian chronicle "Dakotah" published in 1849. This
book was the prototype of Longfellow's poem "Hiawatha." In 1851 he began his
five-year task of illustrating Henry R. Schoolcraft's six volume
In addition to the Schoolcraft reports, Eastman's work appeared in
Brigham Young University Library acquired the Seth Eastman drawing or sketch book from the San Francisco art gallery of W. Graham Arader III in August 1990. The Drawing Book contained 59 original pencil and ink drawings on 35 papers glued onto 6 pages (back and front) measuring 6 1/2 x 9 1/2 inches. The sketches contain notations and two numbering systems, presumably by the artist. The pages were sewn together along one edge.
It was determined that the collection needed conservation work and it was taken to the Conservation Lab in the Lee Library. Cathy Bell dismantled the book, and in consultation with the Archives, separated the papers from the sketchbook and mounted each in its own housing. She also designed two special storage containers for the collection. She noted when she removed the sewing that at least two pages had been cut out of the Book prior to its arrival at BYU. Thus it is possible that the Nauvoo Sketch owned by the LDS Church Museum originally belonged in this grouping.
The collection consists of two boxes of individually matted papers numbered in the order in which they were found in the Sketchbook. Where a paper contains multiple sketches each sketch is lettered.
Original works by Eastman survive in the collections of the Corcoran Gallery of Art and the Capitol in Washington, D.C.; the Bushnell Collection of Seth Eastman sketches and watercolors, Peabody Museum, Harvard University; the Minneapolis Institute of Arts; the Thomas Gilcrease Institute of American History and Art, Tulsa, Oklahoma; and the Marion Koogler McNay Art Institute, San Antonio, Texas. The Museum of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Salt Lake City, Utah owns an 1848 pencil sketch of Nauvoo, Illinois by Eastman. This notebook of pencil sketches, purchased in 1990 by the Lee Library of Brigham Young University, is believed to be the oldest extant group of Eastman pencil sketches.
Published works containing Seth Eastman's art:
(NOTE: Harold B. Lee Library possesses first editions of books marked with *)
* Mary H. Eastman,
* ________.
________.
* Henry Rowe Schoolcraft,
Published works on Seth Eastman include the following:
Lois W. Burkhalter,
David I. Bushnell, Jr.,
Frances Densmore,
"A Group of Water Colors by Seth Eastman"
Lila M. Johnson, "Seth Eastman Water Colors,"
John Francis McDermott,
________.
________.
Robert Taft,
The leaves containing Seth Eastman's sketches are listed in the order in which they were found in the original sketchbook. Each leaf of the sketchbook is individually mounted, with its reference number in brackets on the bottom right corner of the inside mat. Where a single piece of paper contains more than one sketch, the number refers to the leaf and a letter (a--g) is assigned to each sketch.
Besides the master reference number, each sketch is labelled according to two prior, but incongruent numbering systems. The first of these (apparently the original,) matches the rest of the writing on the sketch and is prefixed by "NO. ". The second numbering, usually in the upper right hand corner of the drawing in ink, is shown in this listing in parenthesis. The number in <>, found on the bottom left corner of the inside mat of each leaf corresponds to its location in the original book, page number and side.
The "title" of each sketch is the whole of the writing found on it. Illegible words are marked with a {?}. Words inside [] are included for clarification and not found on the sketches.