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Drawings

Lot and His Daughters

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Type
Drawings(Opens in new tab)
Date
1799-1800
Accession number
000.55
Maker
William Blake(Opens in new tab) (British, 1757–1827)
Dimensions
frame: 17 1/8 × 23 1/8 × 1 1/2 in. (43.5 × 58.7 × 3.8 cm.) image: 10 1/4 × 14 3/4 in. (26 × 37.5 cm.)
Medium
pen and tempera on canvas
Description
In 1799 and 1800, Blake executed a series of tempera paintings, all with Biblical subjects, for Thomas Butts. These fall into two groups: twenty-six extant and twenty-four untraced works, all about 27 x 38 cm., with both Old and New Testament subjects; and five larger paintings (approx. 32 x 50 cm.) on the life of Christ. "Lot and His Daughters," based on Genesis 19:30-35, is part of the former group. The figures are shown "in a cave" (19:30) with the daughter on the left just lifting her father's loin cloth. The wineskin and two cups on the ground remind us of Lot's drunkenness. In the middle distance beyond the grape vines on the right stands a small, white figure facing left-no doubt Lot's wife turned to "a pillar of salt" (19:26). The burning of Sodom and Gomorrah (19:24) is pictured as one or two buildings in flames on the horizon above Lot's wife. The scene suggests Blake's concepts of the limited senses and consciousness of the natural man and his fall into degraded forms of sexuality. Bindman 1977, 120, notes that Lot "is pictured as a slumbering Farnese Hercules, and the composition perhaps makes a satirical reference to the well-known Baroque composition of Hercules between Vice and Virtue." [1] He also compares Lot to Blake's "type of Strong Man described in the The Descriptive Catalogue"-see comments on "Old Parr When Young," 000.48. Paley 1978, 55, notes that the painting "may owe something to Rubens," apparently because of the sensuous proportions and disposition of the figures. Blake's so-called "tempera" medium does not have egg yolk as an emulsion vehicle, but rather includes glue or a low-solubility gum as the binder. Contemporary handbooks on painting sometimes called this medium "size-color" or "distemper." [2] Notes 1. Blake engraved a copyof the arnese Herculeds for the second plate of "Sculpture" in Abraham Rees, The Cyclopaedia, plates volume 4, in 1816, but he was no doubt familiar with casts or engravins of the state fro his early days as a student at the Royal Academy. For the subject of Hercules between Vice and Virtue, Butlin 1981, 319, refers specifically to the engraving after Paolo de Mattheis in the Earl of Shaftesbury's Characteristics of Man, 1714, volume 3. 2. See Bindman 1977, 117-18, and Essick 1980, 122-23.
Credit
The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens
Department
European Art
Find out more
View in the Art Museum catalog(Opens in new tab)
Lot, drunk and asleep, rests in a cave (Genesis 19). One of his daughters, having fallen into sinful desires, begins to lift her father's loincloth. In the distance on the right are the burning cities of Sodom and Gomorrah and the tiny figure of Lot's wife turned to a pillar of salt. Blake painted over 50 temperas on Biblical themes for his chief patron, Thomas Butts.

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