Sketching St. Louis

This is urban sketching with a touch of artifice. On a very warm summer afternoon in June my sketch group met up at Calvary Cemetery, one of two neighboring beautiful and tranquil memorial gardens on the city’s north side, to draw models posed among the elaborate markers and crypts. To me the image suggests the presence of an angel in mourning, a common theme depicted by tomb statuary but carved in stone or cast in bronze.  It seemed appropriate to sketch this pose on a page of a book of collected poetry by Tennesse Williams who was buried here in 1983. I returned a couple of weeks later specifically to find the poet/playwright’s tombstone to add it to my collection of sketches in the book. The grave is near the road but the setting is serene.  His sister, said to be the basis of the fragile Laura in his 1945 tragic play The Glass Menagerie, is buried nearby.