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Sketch - Litchfield County Courthouse

1953-17-29

Blue pen and ink drawing. Initialed in blue pen on the bottom right hand corner and below the initials are three lines written in pencil and one line written in blue pen that reads: "Litchfield County/Court House/6/6/49/Honesdale Study - ." The sketch is divided up into three separate smaller sketches detailing three separate parts of the same building. The smallst sketch in the top right hand corner is a detail of a weather vane mounted atop a small dome. The larger top sketch next to it is a sketch of the front of the courthouse with only the right and middle sections completed in detail. The middle section also only continues up until the clock at the topmost part of the building, leaving off where the detailed sketch of the dome and weather vane beside it might go. The third and largest of the sketches at the bottom of the paper is a side view of the left hand side of the building that is left off in the above sketch.

Born in Philadelphia, Austin M. Purves Jr. (1900-1977) lived in the East Litchfield section of Litchfield for the last 40 years of his life. Purves studied art at the Philadelphia Academy of Fine Arts and the Académie Julian in Paris, France, before opening a studio in New York, where he was director of the day and night schools at the Cooper Union. After moving to Litchfield, Purves taught art at Bennington College and at Yale Art School and was a member of the Architectural League of New York, the National Society of Mural Painters, and the (then newly-formed) Hartford Art School. Over the course of his career Purves did commission work for R. H. Macy & Co., the Folger Memorial Library in Washington, D.C., the American Battle Monument in Draguignan, France, the 1939 World’s Fair, various churches, ship lines and private clients, among others. In addition to commission work, Purves drew primarily from people and nature for his own personal sketches and paintings.

• Purves, Austin, 1900-1977

1949

Overall Width 11.5"; Length 1'5.625"

• paper
• ink