Diary of Walter Osborne

Part of the Irish Archive

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Description

1878 Pocket-sized week per view diary of Walter Osborne (aged 18) includes pencil entries for months January until end August. Includes short descriptive jottings of the artist’s daily activities ranging from art works to personal activities such as a ‘walk with Charlie’ (12 January 1878) and ‘went to church’ (27 February 1878). Includes descriptions of art works and multiple references to painting ‘head of my great grandfather’ (2 January 1878), ‘Jack’s head’ (5 January 1878), ‘sitting from Charlie’ [artist’s brother Charles osborne] (5 January 1878) and ‘Nora’s legs and feet and torso’ (7 March 1878). Includes financial account summaries indicating the purchase of art supplies such as oil paints, sketching stool, clothing such as waistcoat, handkerchiefs and sundry expenses (week 22, June 1878). Also includes account summary of numbered paintings sold ‘at the Academy’ totalling 1,428 pounds 9 shillings (week 10, week 11 in March 1878). Diary entry and account summary refers to frame maker, David [G]ryer. Osborne comments on visit to National Gallery ‘to see something to copy but was disappointed’ (10 January 1878). Sunday entries refer to church visits including a visit to a ‘Magdalene Asylum’ with Vio [sister, Violet Osborne] and the artist’s mother to listen to Reverend Stopford Brooke and the artist writes he ‘went again in evening heard Stopford Brooke’ (13 January 1878). Diary format includes printed reference information including directories of United Kingdom regional banks, London banks and banking companies, her majesty’s chief officers of state, British and foreign ambassadors, public holidays, the royal family of Great Britain, London theatres and places of amusement and members of the House of Commons including names of 103 members representing Ireland. Also includes ‘almanack’ [almanac] for 1878 with pencil marks on ‘remarkable days’ including pencil mark ‘x’ beside death of French artist, Nicholas Poussin 19 November 1675.

Creator

Osborne, Walter Frederick

Related topics

Osborne, Walter Frederick