"Compositions" Sketchbooks 1-8 (dated only), 1934 - 1936

Bethune's Sketchbooks and Notebooks subseries cover the period of 1930-1939. These formative years in her artistic life encompass her art school days, early apprenticeships, and first commissions of works. The books (created, dated, and often numbered by Ade) are streams of visual and textual consciousness as Bethune explored ideas and creative concepts through rough sketches, notes, lists of subjects, and other inserted ephemeral materials. The sketches are generally done in pencil or pen (although there are also a few watercolors) and the notes are mostly written in French (with a few in Greek and Latin). The first sketchbook, labeled "Ete 1930", has beautiful endpapers painted in watercolor to represent three artistic muses dancing with Pegasus. The final notebook in this subseries contains Bethune's subject lists of the projects she was working on during this time period.