Juvenilia | Cotsen Children’s Library

Traddles displaying a slate with a skeleton drawing. From an advertising card for a cigarette manufacturer.

The most celebrated child artist of the skeleton must be Tommy Traddles, David Copperfield’s fellow pupil at Salem House. Or would be if any of his slate drawings had survived…

Poor Traddles!…He was always being caned—I think he was caned every day that half year….After laying his head on the desk for a little while, he would cheer up somehow, begin to laugh again, and draw skeletons all over his slate before his eyes were dry. I used at first to wonder what comfort Traddles found in drawing skeletons, and for some time looked upon him as a sort of hermit, who reminded himself by those symbols of mortality that caning couldn’t last forever. But I believe he only did it because they were easy and didn’t require any features (Charles Dickens, David Copperfield, chapter 7).

We may have none of Traddles’ art, but there are a respectable number of boys’ and girls’ drawings of skeletons in the manuscript versions of the religious turn-up book, The Beginning, Progress and End of Man. (There’s more information about this fascinating illustrated text at the Learning as Play site). The subject of the final metamorphic picture is a rich and worldly young man, who, when the flaps are lifted, transforms into Death, always represented as a skeleton, usually holding an hourglass and scythe, sometimes with a coffin in the background. The manuscript turn-ups are actually more common than the printed ones, whose heyday was between 1660 and the early 1800s. However, the anonymous manuscripts are harder to localize, even when signed by their makers. English or American? 18 or 19^th century?

Here is a gallery of skeletons from Cotsen’s rather large collection of the manuscript turn-up books. No two are the same and none are even remotely anatomically correct. Maybe the differences reveal something about the extent of the individual artist’s knowledge of the human body, in addition to the level of skill with pen and watercolor wash.

Perhaps Eleanor Schank was quite young in 1776 when she scratched out the drawings for this turn-up. The figure’s costume is unmistakably feminine. It’s the only one in the collection where a young woman is substituted for the man. The skeleton seems to have given her more trouble (Cotsen in process).The anonymous artist of this nicely colored one emphasized the joints at the expense of the rib cage. The floral frames around the verse are a dainty touch (Cotsen 5145).This creator of this unsigned manuscript produced a substantial man in blue breeches holding money bags and the pleasingly abstract skeleton with bow legs. The Adam and Eve were given belly buttons (Cotsen 23624).John Sutton drew this well dressed young man in a tricorne and a better than average skeleton–one of the few with a pelvic girdle (Cotsen 3135). The drawings in this, the last example, has dash and energy, along with major problems with the perspective. The skeleton’s face looks a little too friendly.Children continue to be fascinated by making skeletons. One father/blogger has immortalized his three-year-old son’s obsession in at least three posts. He sounds as if he could give Tommy Traddles a run for his money filling up all available blank space with animated constructions of bones…

Drawing skeletons and other scary things

Type two words—“creativity” and “children”—into the search bar, hit the magnifying glass icon, and watch the results cascade down the screen. The tenor of all these hits to scholarly articles in psychology, curriculum on public television for carers, websites devoted to child development, Ideas.Ted.com, etc. is unlocking every child’s imaginative potential is crucial to their intellectual and emotional progress.

Art instruction emphasizing creative self-expression through craft projects is believed to be among the best ways of opening up children’s minds to this process. The idea that children should be inspired to discover within the seeds of creativity and to release their individuality through art for its own sake rather than to prepare for careers dates back to early twentieth-century Vienna. Franz Cizek (1765-1943), the most celebrated professor of art education of his generation, promoted a method which encouraged pupils to teach themselves, discarding the traditional formal study of technique for the exploration of a wide variety of media.

Cizek’s course inaugurated in 1903 at the School of Applied Arts, with its strong ties to the Viennese Sezession, was not the only place in Austria where boys and girls were taught according to this philosophy. Emmy Zweybrück-Prochaska (1890-1956) opened a school just for girls in 1915. nfluenced by Cizek’s progressive, “permissive” methods, she brought deep interests in applied design, and the so-called naïve design language of indigenous peoples, and women’s handwork in the textile arts. Zweybruck parted company from Cizek in her practice in bringing out self-expressive potential through achievement of technical proficiency and her dedication to training both amateurs and young women aspiring to careers as artists.

A sample of work by some of Zweybruck’s students has been preserved in the Cotsen collection. Among the most delightful are the hand-drawn postcards. The assignment seems to have been to illustrate the front of a commercially printed card and write a message to their teacher. The illustration shown below is signed “E. C.” and the signature is “your Evelyn.” The back is postmarked “1916.” Lisbeth Haase is one of the most accomplished artists in the archive. Here is her design of a girl watering a cactus for a postcard. The black and white drawing is the right-hand half of a frame for a double-page spread in a book. The third is a clever jumble perhaps of Lisbeth’s favorite things or an assortment of subjects Zweybruck suggested be incorporated into some kind of picture.The largest group reflects the method’s foundational principle of letting children try their hands at different media and includes linocuts, collages, papercuts, and drawings, some signed by the young creators. One of Zweybruck’s techniques was to read aloud detailed descriptions or little stories lasting around 5 minutes and allowed the students “to find their way as best they can and will” in their responses. One day’s project must have been based on the legend of St. George and the dragon and it’s fascinating to notice the differences between these two attempts. Unfortunately they are both anonymous designs.Perhaps this whimsical collage of an elephant by “N. J.” was a design for a toy or figurine. N. J. used silver paper and sequins in addition to different colored papers.The horizontal borders in watercolor or cut papers are unsigned, but the linocut of the fence is credited to Zviki Abramowicz. The unsigned designs for borders range from abstraction to the highly stylized “primitive. It’s also possible to compare two versions of the same image within the archive. This design was executed in black and white and in full color. The black and white version of the Virgin and Christ Child was mounted on the same sheet as a quick sketch of several faces. This ambitious image is also unsigned.In the coming months, all the materials by Zweybruck’s students in the collection will be reorganized so they will be more accessible to researchers. The names of all the students who signed their work will also be recorded. Perhaps someone some day will try to identify the girls who studied with Zweybruck and establish how many went on to be artists.