“Review of *The Drawings of Louis Henry Sullivan: A Catalogue of the Frank Lloyd Wright Collection at the Avery Architectural Library*, by Paul E. Sprague, foreword by Adolf K. Placzek”

AboutA second review of Paul E. Sprague's *The Drawings of Louis Henry Sullivan*, this one by Lauren S. Weingarden in *The Art Bulletin*, published alongside an unrelated review of a survey of German Romantic painting. Weingarden credits Sprague as the foremost authority on Sullivan's ornament for dating, attributing, and stylistically classifying the 122 drawings, and for tracing Sullivan's sources (Owen Jones's *Grammar of Ornament*, Asa Gray's botanical texts, Frank Furness's Gothic Revival vocabulary). She argues, however, that Sprague's catalogue essay under-theorizes Sullivan's metaphysical conception of ornament as an expression of the "Infinite Creative Spirit," and offers her own extended discussion of Sullivan's philosophical sources, his technical affinity with French Impressionism, and the debate over why so many Sullivan drawings were lost or destroyed, including the question of George Elmslie's culpability.

PURL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0004-3079%28198112%2963%3A4%3C690%3ATDOLHS%3E2.0.CO%3B2-P