Prints

Albion Rose (or The Dance of Albion)

Type: Prints(Opens in new tab)
Date: ca. 1793
Accession number: 000.124
Maker: William Blake(Opens in new tab) (British, 1757–1827)
Dimensions: platemark: 10 11/16 x 7 13/16 in. (27.2 x 19.9 cm.) sheet: 14 1/2 x 10 3/8 in. (36.8 x 26.3 cm.)
Medium: etching/engraving color printed with gum or glue based pigments and hand finished with watercolors, pen and ink on wove paper
Description: First executed as a pencil drawing ca. 1780 (Victoria and Albert Museum, Butlin 1981, No. 73). There is no recorded impression of the first state printed in intaglio. Indeed, the first state is known only through the residual indications of intaglio lines in the Huntington impression. Another color printed impression is in the British Museum. In comparison to it, the Huntington impression is much more thinly printed, and thus it may be the second pull taken imediately after the British Museum print with little, if any, color added. Blake seems to have done most of his color printing from copperplates ca. 1794-96. In about 1804 or later, Blake reworked the plate, adding a worm just left of the figure's left foot, a bat-winged moth between his legs, and a caption: "Albion rose from where he labourd at the Mill with Slaves / Giving himself for the Nations he danc'd the dance of eternal death." Like the second state, the first may also be signed in the plate "WB inv 1780" (probably the date Blake "invented" the design on paper), but the color printing makes it impossible to see these letters present. The print was removed in 1953 from the copy of "The Song of Los" in the Library. While part of that book, the print was gilt along the top edge, inscribed in pencil "an additional plate," and numbered "9" in pencil as the last plate in the volume. Also inscribed "end" and "14" in pencil on the verso.
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)

Label text

Etched c. 1793, printed c. 1796. Albion, a traditional personification of England, is for Blake a representation of universal humanity. Here he rises above the dark earth in a burst of light, his ideal human form fully displayed.

Albion Rose (or The Dance of Albion)

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