Sketch for Putto

Francis Augustus Lathrop's pen study of a winged cherub demonstrates the academic draftsmanship underlying American decorative arts of the 1890s. The putto—a classical motif borrowed from Renaissance painting—appears here in loose, gestural line work, capturing movement and form with minimal marks. Lathrop, a prominent designer and muralist, used such sketches as working studies for larger commissions in ornamental design, stained glass, and architectural embellishment. This sheet reveals the working method of a trained artist translating European artistic tradition into the emerging American design vocabulary of the Gilded Age.