Finding Aid to the Clement Hurd Drawings 1955, 1958 BASC 11
Finding aid prepared by Susanne Mari Sakai
Book Arts & Special Collections
February 2020
100 Larkin Street
San Francisco 94102
bookarts@sfpl.org
Title: Clement Hurd Drawings
Date: 1955, 1958
Identifier/Call Number: BASC 11
Creator:
Hurd, Clement, 1908-1988
Physical Description:
1 flat file, 1 oversize flat box
(2 linear feet)
Contributing Institution:
Book Arts & Special Collections
Abstract: The collection contains original artwork by Clement Hurd for the children's books
The Cat from Telegraph Hill
and
The Faraway Christmas: A Story of the Farallon Islands,
both written by his wife Edith Thacher Hurd and published in the 1950's.
Physical Location: Collection is stored on site.
Language of Materials: Collection materials are in
English.
Collection is open for research and is available for use during Book Arts & Special Collections hours.
Copyright has not been assigned to the San Francisco Public Library. All requests for permission to publish or quote from
materials must be submitted in writing to Book Arts & Special Collections. Permission for publication is given on behalf of
the San Francisco Public Library as the owner of the physical items.
[Identification of item/Title of folder], Clement Hurd Drawings (BASC 11), Book Arts & Special Collections, San Francisco
Public Library.
Transferred from the San Francisco Public Library's Children's Department in or after 1993.
Researchers are encouraged to see also the Clement Hurd papers and the Edith Thacher Hurd papers at the University of Minnesota
Archives.
Clement Hurd was born January 12, 1908 in New York City, the son of a mortgage banker. He graduated with a PhD from Yale University
in 1930 and later studied painting in Paris with the artist Ferdinand Leger from 1931 to 1933. He illustrated his first children's
book in 1938,
Bumble Bugs and Elephants
by Margaret Wise Brown. The following year, he won the assignment to illustrate Gertrude Stein's first and only children's
book
The World is Round
. The same year he married children's author Edith Thacher with whom he collaborated on more than fifty books. Their son Thacher
Hurd also became an author and illustrator of children's books and all three worked on
Little Dog Dreaming
, published in 1967. Throughout his long and prolific career, Clement Hurd illustrated over seventy-five children's books,
including the classics
The Runaway Bunny
and
Goodnight Moon
by Margaret Wise Brown. He died in 1988 in San Francisco.
The collection contains the artboards of original illustrations for
The Cat from Telegraph Hill
(1955) and a book of sketches as well as an artboard for
The Faraway Christmas: A Story of the Farallon Islands
(1958).
Subjects and Indexing Terms
Cats -- Fiction
Christmas -- Fiction
Farallon Islands (Calif.) -- Fiction
Illustrated children's books
Illustration of books -- Juvenile literature
Illustrators
Illustrators -- Juvenile literature.
San Francisco (Calif.) -- Fiction
Hurd, Clement, 1908-1988
Hurd, Edith Thacher, 1910-1997