Cletus Setley sketchbook, [Civil War Era]
1 volume
As a youth, Cletus Setley of Reading, Pennsylvania, kept this 31-page sketchbook around the period of the American Civil War. He created pencil doodles, pencil sketches, and pencil and watercolor illustrations of people, ships, caricatures (including anthropomorphic creatures), and a possible story narrative. One page is headed "1864 Members of Company," including Cletus Setley and other names organized by military rank. The volume has brown leather wrappers, and the cover reads, "No. 1 Meredith Henderson & Co."
As a youth, Cletus Setley of Reading, Pennsylvania, kept this 31-page sketchbook around the period of the American Civil War. He created pencil doodles, pencil sketches, and pencil and watercolor illustrations of people, ships, caricatures (including anthropomorphic creatures), and a possible story narrative. One page is headed "1864 Members of Company," including Cletus Setley and other names organized by military rank. The volume has brown leather wrappers, and the cover reads, "No. 1 Meredith Henderson & Co."
Drawings include:
- Woman doing laundry/ holding washtub
- A person on horseback
- A building [bearing a similarity to John Setley's storefront]
- Woman holding a key next to a door marked "East," beside a small anthropomorphized quadruped
- Male performer or dandy
- Red and blue block text, "UNION"
- Ships in the shape of a horse, with men holding spears and shields
- Hunter aiming a gun at a stag
- Hunters shooting at elephants
- American sailing ships
- People and anthropomorphic creatures
- Man fleeing from dark-skinned persons armed with spears and other weapons
- Shipwrecks
- A lifeboat
- A storefront with a sign reading "JOHN SETLEY" listing flour, seed, and other dry goods
- Sidewheel steamboat
- One page of caricatures, anthropomorphic beings, women, witches, and devils
- Self-portrait, "The names of my valentines Squirt irish women & the Laundry women & to a Zouvave [Zouave] stingy man & the gallent [?]ing the [queshten?] grocer & long shanks"
- Self-portrait and building
- Sketch of a woman with a pipe in her teeth, labelled "IRISH WOMAN". On the same page is a pencil sketch of what may be a quilt block design.
- Performers, possibly for a circus or side-show
A few of the pencil and watercolor illustrations appear to relate to a story of hunters, possibly in Africa, their encounters with indigenous peoples, and a subsequent shipwreck.