Drawings
Pestilence
- Date
- ca. 1784 or later
- Accession number
- 82.36
- Maker
- William Blake(Opens in new tab) (British, 1757–1827)
- Dimensions
- 8 7/8 x 11 1/4 in. (22.5 x 28.5 cm.) sheet: 9 1/2 x 11 3/4 in. (24.2 x 29.9 cm.)
- Medium
- pencil on laid paper
- Description
- The theme of this pencil sketch and its basic compositional elements attracted Blake's attention from ca. 1779 to ca. 1805. Listed below are the seven related works. Butlin 1981, No. 184. "Pestilence, Probably the Great Plague of London." Pen and watercolor, ca. 1779-80. Collection of Robert Tear. No. 185 "Pestilence." Pen and watercolor, ca. 1780-84. Collection of Robert Essick. No. 201.25. Pencil sketch for an emblem series in Blake's Notebook, ca. 1790-92. British Library. Europe, plate 7. Full-page design, relief and white line etching, 1794. No. 190. "Pestilence." Pen and watercolor, ca 1790-95. Estate of Gregory Bateson. No. 192. "Pestilence." Pen and watercolor, ca. 1795-1800. City Art Gallery, Bristol. No. 193. "Pestilence." Pen and watercolor over pencil, ca. 1805. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. The first two, clearly early, works are associated with Blake's execution of a group of small watercolors illustrating scenes in English history. [1] All the later versions are not specifically related to the London plague of 1665 but embody universal themes with revolutionary and apocalyptic implications. The left side of the composition in both early versions is dominated by a seated man supporting a stricken woman with a bellman in the background. Blake used the first two figures in his Notebook sketch of ca. 1790-92 and all three in the design in Europe, 1794. When he reworked the full "Pestilence" composition at about the same time (No. 190), he left these three figures out and moved the standing man holding a stricken woman from the right side of the design to fill the vacated left side. The remainder of the design was completely reconstituted with new figures and architectural background along the lines we can see in the pencil sketch. Rossetti 1863, 241, describes the Huntington drawing as a "reasonably careful sketch for" the final version of ca. 1805, which seems unlikely. Bennett (1983 and forthcoming) suggests that the drawing may be the first in the 1790s group, a preliminary to No. 190. Yet a third hypothesis is prompted by the major compositional development among the last three watercolors: the shift from showing the faces of all figures in profile (no. 190) to showing two figures on the left in three-quarter view. The companion drawings to Nos. 190 and 192, two versions of "A Breach in a City, the Morning after the Battle" (Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh, and Ackland Art Center, University of North Carolina; Butlin 1981, Nos. 189 and 191), show the same progression from profile to three-quarter view in the two standing figures on the right. The unfinished character of the Huntington sketch, and the hesitant and studied nature of its lines, suggest that it is Blake's firsst experiment at changing some figures to three-quarter view to develop the expressive potential of their faces. He tried showing more of the faces of both figures standing behind the litter, but this disturbs the symmetrical, frieze-like relationship between the two men carrying the shrouded body. Consequently, in the last two versions, Blake retained the three-quarter view of the standing woman, returned the standing man to profile, and turned the face of the man holding the woman on the left toward us. The last two watercolors are somewhat tighter compositions than No. 190, with less distance between the standing figures. A similar composition in the pencil sketch allies it with the later group. Thus, the Huntington drawing may fit into the "Pestilence" sequence as a transition between Nos. 190 and 192. There is no record of the existence of this drawing between its sale in 1916 to an unknown purchaser and its rediscovery at the Huntington in 1982 in a pile of miscellaneous drawings. The provenance is problematic and has in the past been confused with that of Butlin's No. 192. When found at the Huntington, a printed label, "450 Blake……..The Plague," was pasted just below the top right margin. This is very probably a clipping from a sale or exhibition catalogue, but no one has yet been able to identify its source. The label has been removed, for reasons of conservation, but retained. The suite of Blake's Dante engravings, with which the drawing was associated in the Rowfant Library catalogue of 1886 and in the 1916 auction catalogue, can not be identified with any of the Dante sets now at the Huntington Library (see RB57437, RB283403, RB57438, and RB471375). Notes 1. See David Bindman,"Blake's 'Gothicsed Imagination' and the History of England," in Jean H. Hagstrum, "Christ's Body," in William Blake: Essays in Honour of Sir Geoffrey Keynes, ed. Morton D. Paley and Michael Phillips (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973), 29-49.
- 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)
In Blake's earlier versions of this design it illustrated the London plague of 1665, but as he continued to develop the composition it took on more universal and apocalyptic meanings associated with the plagues of the Old Testament and in Revelation. This sketch was discovered in 1982 at the Huntington in a pile of miscellaneous drawings.
